Wednesday 30 May 2012

Pannal and the Jubilee

The Fabulous weather continues but not for much longer THEY tell us but considering THEY never told us we were going to have a heatwave I do not have much face in THEM.  Geoff came back from Wembley elated after Huddersfield Town's win. We had left him a bottle of beer, a card and a balloon that lit up. Yesterday Geoff and Shirley invited us in to the garden and we all had champagne. Lovely. Pannal is preparing to have a Jubilee weekend which I hope will be well attended as it is half term and a number of people have their own plans us included. I have put flags out and decorated the Pannal Village Society notice board. At the church all Pannal groups will be represented and I have spent this past week helping various groups with their history.  I golfed yesterday and came second. Came third the week before which I am pleased about as I only came back to the club in March after being away nearly a year as I had a big op on valves in my legs then contracted dvt but I am back golfing and walking which we love and our other love apart from our family is gardening although the shine is going off that after carting big cans of water round every night. Must go and feed the cats are they are staring in the window with their knives and forks at the ready.

Sunday 27 May 2012

Pannal and sunshine

Huddersfield Town won. Very exciting game I listened to it in the garden in the glorious sunshine. Geoff went down to Wembley and came back a happy man.  This was also the day of Pannal Primary Schools Fair and what a brilliant sunny day it was. It has been scorching now for nearly a week. Could go on like this all summer as far as I am concerned. Pannal has been very quite no one around. Expect everyone is in their gardens with the barbeque.  St Robert are holding an exhibition focusing on the last 60 years of Pannal. I have been very busy helping various organisations with memorabilia. I am working with Pannal Village Society on their display and have helped Pannal Primary School with bits and pieces. Our family still hold the record for the longest attendance at Pannal Primary Susan was the first to attend in 1971 five years after the school moved from Woodcock Hill to Pannal Green. Susan was followed by Michael, then James and lastly Richard.  Off to do some watering now.

Thursday 24 May 2012

Pannal and

Great weather scorching as the papers say. Not scorching at the weekend as ten of us (part of the family) and two dogs hired a canal barge for the day 9am to 10pm from Skipton to Silsden. Fantastic took our lunch and the birthday cakes and moored up and visited pubs on the way. If you have not tried it give it a go. Its great fun. The mystery of the fairy lights has been solved Rachel who now writes the Pannal column e-mailed to say they were falling down from the tree and she with a Dad from the school tried to put them up again to no avail as they were broken. This got me thinking of all that had happened     on Pannal Green over the years. There used to be a butchers shop there and a blacksmiths both now demolished as were the cottages in front of St Robert's church (car park now) cows were kept on the green. In 1933 during a fair on the green the event was enlivened by Pannal Memorial Hall going on fire. During World War Two chickens were kept there by the children from Pannal Old School which was on Woodcock Hill. Miss Wigby kept ducks there in the 1960s. Running races were held there. Hundreds of daffodils were planted by myself and family and I helped the children from Pannal Primary School planted crocus round the tree. Services held - picnic on the green - by St Robert's and Pannal Methodist churches. Trees were planted. Cherry trees contain christmas lights in memory of three boys from Pannal Green killed in a car accident which Yasmin and I collected as donations. Also three seats in their memory. Another very sad occasion and a tree was planted on the green which I arranged in memory of four girls from Burn Bridge killed in a car accident. My school talks started on the green and still do for visitors to Pannal. I put stocks on the green with oak wood donated by Frank Hird and a grant from Cllr Cliff Trotter. VE Day Celebrations were held there. Children from Pannal Primary School planted crocus and I helped them. End this bit by saying Pannal Village Society are providing new lights for the tree in the middle this Christmas.  On Saturday Huddersfield Town are in the Yorkshire Final and my next door neighbour Geoff is their greatest fan so if they win it could be champers all round.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Pannal and life

Cannot get rid of the north east wind and when it is not windy one breathes a sigh of relief and then it rains. Have now been told by "they who know" that it will continue like this until mid/end June. But and there is always a but perhaps they are wrong.  On the surface life in Pannal continues but controversy is never far away. Sandy Bank Quarry will it be closed off from the fields that one walks across to Almsford Bank? Police Training College on Yew Tree Lane closing down and housing, a large number, being built there. What does this mean in traffic terms for both Yew Tree Lane and Pannal/Burn Bridge? Concrete Batching Plant at Dunlopillo site many lorries annoying residents at the top of the village. Looking forward to one joyful occasion - Her Majesty the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. There will be an exhibition of Pannal memorabilia on display in St Robert's church. I am providing a number of items and also putting photographs bunting in the notice board near the church. We have four children and they are coming up this weekend with partners and grandchildren to celebrate Susan, James and Charlotte's birthdays. Should be great fun as we are hiring a boat on the Skipton canal. I finish this blog as I started by saying hope the weather improves.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

This week in Pannal

Yesterday I golfed at Ripon. The sun shone. It was a bit windy but ok. Today at Pannal no sun, a very cold wind and I was frozen. Been worse if it had rained I suppose. Had a Pannal Village Society meeting last night and one of the subjects was fairy lights on the trees on Pannal Green. I found the set of lights from the large tree in the middle of the green all broken and in the bin by the church car par. Did the wind blow them off or were they taken off. We do not know so now we have to buy more. I received an e-mail from Moira Holmes nee Vasey the grandaughter of Bernard and Elizabeth Cobb who lived at 39 Station Road. Bernard was a Methodist and knew all about methodism in Pannal and also Pannal's history. I used to visit him in the 1970 and we would chat about life in Pannal. Moira was born at her grandparents house then her parents moved to Lincoln. Mother died young in 1957. Moira and her sister Brenda came back to Pannal. Dad remarried and Moira and her sister moved to Starbeck She attended Starbeck Primary, then Harrogate High School which she left in 1969. Met her husband Colin. Settled in the Abingdon area until they emigrated to Canada as newly-weds in 1974. They have two daughters and live in Manitoba. I have sent her my Postcards from Pannal book which I am sure will bring back happy memories. Remember John Scott the Vicar at St Roberts church in 1978 shall write a bit about him in another blog.

Thursday 10 May 2012

Pannal village and Dunlopillo

I said I would tell you about Dunlopillo formerly Bintex built on farm fields and allotments had operated independently from 1938 to 1949. The owner, a Mr Binns (hence the company name) had invented a latex foam process which was similar to that developed by Dunlop but after the Japanese invasion of Malaya the raw rubber on which the process depended could no longer be obtained. Incidentally, my husband's great great grandfather John Smith, was Curator of the Royal Kew Gardens 1864-86, during the period when the first rubber seedlings were grown at Kew and they were then taken by one of the young Kew gardeners to Ceylon where they formed the basis of the first of the great rubber plantations.   Grandfather's name appeared in the famous book The Weeping Wood by Vicki Baum all about the rubber plantation. Bintex was called upon to do other work of national importance and undertook the manufacture and assembly of parts for radar equipment. Huts were built to extend the production area and women part-time workers were recruited from the surrounding areas. After the war ended Bintex Ltd., reverted to its original business, but it was not long before Dunlop was expressing an interest in their activities. This culminated in a takeover in 1949 with a change of name to Dunlopillo. Then in 1960, a decision was made to relocate the Dunlopillo Headquarters to Pannal and a new office block was built the following year to accommodate the increased number of staff. The company flourished and with a total site area of 178 acres and in the mid 1980s with a staff of 440 people this had become a large industrial unit in relation to the size of the village itself.  I well remember the Annual Gala Day when all the children of employees, many from the village, were invited to take part in the sports and events and a well known personality was invited to open the Gala. One year it was Jimmy Saville and I was coming out of playgroup held in Pannal Memorial Institute when he spotted me and chased me down the road shouting Now then, now then, now then. Not a pleasant experience as he was not a nice man. There was an active cricket team and football was also played on the five acre sports field with its pavilion well used. There were good years for the company then the name changed to Dunlop and there was a management take over and the company struggled in later years which culminated in a complete shutdown and it was sold. Eventually it fell into the hands of Forward Investments (the Ward Bros) and is now a number of units open to the public one of which is a cafe named Rumbles and there is also a concrete batching plant at the rear of the premises. The question is will these remain or are other plans afoot?

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

Sunday 6 May 2012

Life in Pannal village

What is it like to live in a village.  Pannal was a village and in some ways still is. A large number of houses have been built since 1966 Walton Park and Crimple Meadows to name two estates. Crimple Meadows is in the heart of the village and Walton Park is divided from the village by the A61 Harrogate/Leeds Road. Before these estates everyone knew everyone else. We stopped and chatted. We met in the main street that runs through the village as we were visiting the butchers, the newsagents or the grocers on the bridge. Alas all gone all there is left is the post office at the top of the village which sells most things. At one time we had thirteen shops. All is not doom and gloom as there are a number of societies, W.I. Friendly Club, Mothers Union etc Two thriving churches St Robert's and The Methodist, a primary school, a public house, Pannal Golf Club a doctors and dentist, a Village Society that has meetings and speakers. Because of the lack of shops most people now drive to get their shopping so very often a wave will suffice instead of a chat.  My husband and myself have lived in the village nearly all our lives and have raised four children here. This gives some idea of our surroundings still green fields, Sandy Bank Quarry and lovely walks but for how much longer.  I have given some idea of where I live and will carry on and talk about the people who live and have lived here. What has happened to the large industrial estate, Dunlopillo, that dominated the village. What are the councils plans,