Category: Past Speakers

The Cragg Vale Coiners                              David Glover

A good turnout saw some sixty guests and members of the society attended the November meeting. The guest speaker, Mr David Glover, the President of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, gave a fascinating illustrated account of the notorious deeds of the Cragg Vale Coiners.

During the 18^th Century Mytholmroyd was the home of a counterfeiting gang led by “King” David Hartley, his family, and many local people. At the time coins like guineas and Portuguese moidores were supplied by landlords of inns and pubs were passed on to the gang who clipped or filed gold, melted the shavings, and stamped a new coin in a counterfeit die. Clipped coins weighed less and were smaller than true currency and this led to many complaints from the local people. Action had to be taken.

An Excise Officer, a William Deighton, was sent to tackle the problem. Being a capital offence, coin clipping, was a dangerous activity and with the threat of the gallows helped gain evidence from gang members turned informers. King David of Bell House was arrested and transported to York where he was imprisoned along with other members of the gang. A plan to murder William Deighton with a reward of £100 was hatched by David Hartley’s brother Isaac and found people willing to carry out this deed.

Deighton was shot, murdered, and robbed returning to his home near the centre of Halifax. The murderers escaped and spent the night in the Dusty Miller, Inn, in Mytholmroyd. The murder did not help the coiners. David Hartley was hung and his body returned and buried in the graveyard of Heptonstall Church near the local museum which houses a display of coiner’s equipment. Deighton’s murderers were brought to justice and executed and their corpse’ were hung in chains on Beacon Hill.

Many of the legends, true events and locations of these crimes still can still be seen locally. Numerous books, plays, T.V. programmes and films have been produced over the years. David’s talk of these dark deeds fascinated the audience who showed generous appreciation to round of the evening.

Frank Collins, landlord of the Dog & Partridge, Holywell Green, recently gave a fascinating talk to the Greater Elland Historical Society about his career which was very well received. Instead of accepting a fee for his services Frank kindly donated the cheque from the society to the Overgate Hospice, Elland. 

Frank Collins, at 96 the oldest landlord in the U.K., accepting the cheque from John Dyson of the GEHS, which is to go to the Hospice.

Annual General Meeting and 50th Anniversary Celebrations

The AGM was presented to members in attendance. All reports were presented and accepted by the members.

Jean Greenwood retired from the committee. She was thanked by the members for her work as Social Secretary and all the support given to the committee.

No members came forward to join the committee . Please contact a member of the committee if you feel you are able to offer any support.

50th Anniversary of The Greater Elland Historical Society

The Greater Elland Historical Society celebrated its 50 year anniversary this year.  Andrew Gilmour gave a presentation on the founders of the society and some of the events enjoyed by the Society over the last half century. He also highlighted some of the changes seen in Elland and the local areas over the last 50 years.  The volunteers from the History Room at Elland Library, brought items from their vast archives for members to view.  A celebratory cake was made by Pat Allen and a small gift was presented to the members to commemorate the event.

Thanks to Jean Waterhouse, David Glanfield, Richard Dyson for providing memories of their time with the Society. Also to Diane Freeman and her brother, daughter and son of Neville Readyhough, for recounting their father’s time in the Society and his vast knowledge of Elland. To Loraine Lodge for all information and photographs provided from the History Room. Finally, to Pat Allen for making the anniversary cake.

AG welcomed everyone to the first meeting of the 22024/2025 season.

Our speaker at our first meeting was none other than Mr Frank Collins, Landlord of the Dog and Partridge in Sowood. Frank is known to a great number of our members either as the landlord of public houses or through his business connections.  As you would expect, the meeting room was packed with members and guests, wanting to listen to Frank’s talk.

Frank is the landlord of the Dog and Partridge at Sowood. The pub was bought in the 1950’s by Frank’s father and prior to Frank taking over as landlord, it was run by his mother Mabel.  Mabel herself did not retire until well into her 80’s and made it into the Guiness Book of Records as being the oldest and longest serving landlady.  Now Frank has the honour of being the oldest pub landlord.

Frank gave brief outline of his younger years and then went on to share with members details of the businesses he purchased, most at very preferential rates, and his dealings with local businessmen.  One of these being a Lord Kagan of Kagan Textiles/Gannex Mills.

One memorable purchase was a large stock of boxes of buttons.  He questioned himself over this purchase at the time, how could he move these buttons on?  When checking the contents, he found boxes that would be suitable for Lord Kagan.  A call was made to Lord Kagan and the transaction took place. He went on to sell the rest to businesses in the North West.  Frank was able, as he normally did, to make a tidy profit.

Had time permitted, I am sure those in attendance would have loved to hear more anecdotes from Frank.  Hopefully he will agree to speak to the Society again in the future.

Frank has kindly donated his fee for the talk to charity.

Flora Smithies, a society member, gave a talk titled Destination Elland – A Journey of Discovery.

This started with her own story of her early live at Dean Head when a visit to Elland was an adventure. Catching the trolley bus from West Vale to Elland when they visited the dentist twice a year. They would also play a visit to the Market Warehouse. A place where you could get almost anything you required.

Flora then went on to present to members a copy of a document she had been given for the sale of land on the Langdale Estate by Joseph Langdale in 1877.  It was the contents of this document that started Flora’s research into how the Langdales of East Yorkshire arrived in Elland.  She traced the history of the Langdale family from their routes in East Yorkshire in the 1500’s to their eventual presence as significant landowners in Elland.

The family had businesses and property in London, Elland, East Yorkshire and France.

After intensive investigations through the family generations Flora was able to find the connection to Elland.  Marmaduke Langdale married Frances Brooksbank of Warley.  Included in the dowry was property and land in Elland.  The presence of the Langdale Family can be seen in the names of some of the streets in Elland: Langdale Street, James Street, Catherine Street and Frances Street named after members of the family.

AG introduced the speaker for the night, Alan Dean, who guided us through a slide show on The History of Joe Dean and Sons, Haulage Contractors.

Alan’s Great Grandfather, Joe Dean was a tenant farmer at Far Syke House, located at the junction of Branch Road and Saddleworth Road, Greetland.

The property at that time was rented from the Dyson family. Later, the Dysons sold the property at auction to a butcher from Hull. However, very shortly afterwards, he sold it on to Joe Dean. He, later, built the terrace of four houses at the end of Branch Road for members of his family for the princely sum of £600.

As well as the usual farming activities, they ran a haulage business using wagons and horses and would often travel to Appleby Horse Market to buy horses which they would then walk back to Greetland over a period of several days. Some of the horses would be sold on to other local farmers.

Joe and Edna Dean had four children, including Alan’s Grandfather and the driving force behind the haulage business, Joe Willy Dean.

Joe Willy persuaded his father to buy their first petrol powered wagon, which he himself drove. In June 1915 he volunteered for the Army, he was called up in 1918, but did not see active service and was demobbed in October 1919. He then persuaded his father to buy a fleet of petrol wagons. At that time a lot of haulage firms started up, buying up and using Army surplus vehicles.

The business was diverse, transporting a lot of products and materials for the textiles industries which were thriving locally, partnering with companies such as Binns and Sons, pulling rags to make shoddy for export, Elland Dying Company, when every Friday they would take a full load to Dundee, they worked on roads for WRCC, and they were also coal merchants, but this ended when the cost of maintaining coal tipper wagons became too much.

The day to day farming business continued, cattle being bought and sold at market (and then bought back as meat from the butchers a few weeks later), and hay making during the summer months – happy days.

As the business prospered, a new garage was built in 1947. Although the structure was sound, the roof was constructed on the cheap and leaked until Alan had it repaired many years later.

Eventually, they started using articulated wagons to attract more lucrative work. There was never a shortage of work for haulage companies and they often had to use subcontractors to meet the demand.

They carried a lot of cotton yarns to knitters in the Midlands, transported quarried rock for Marshalls at Southowram, plastics for Synlon Plastics, heavy engineered products and fabrications for the likes of James Lumb, Hopkinson Valves and Portland Engineering.

They developed a very good relationship with their neighbouring business, Bondina/Freudenberg and on many occasions provided them with wagons for them to dress up as floats for local events. And because of their Auntie’s connection with the Girl Guides, they also provided this same service whenever the Halifax and Elland Carnivals were on.

Alan’s many slides and narrative proved to be a joy to all who attended, bringing back very happy memories of days gone by in our small corner of the world.

The guest speaker, Shirley Asquith, delivered a factual talk on Dorothy Wordsworth, an English poet, author and diarist and, the sister of the much more well known poet, William Wordsworth. Some believe that Dorothy, living in the shadow of her brother, never received the recognition she deserved. But she had no ambition to become well known and was happy for her brother to be in the spotlight. Indeed, it is thought that William’s well known poem, “Daffodils”, was somewhat plagiarised and adapted from a journal entry written by Dorothy some two years earlier.

Dorothy was born on Christmas Day 1771 and raised as a young child in Cockermouth in Cumbria. Sadly, her parents died while she was young, so, in 1783, she came to live in Halifax with her auntie, Elizabeth Threlkeld. In later life she documented, “Halifax, a place I have come to call home”.

She attended Mellins, a boarding school, where she was taught, not only the usual “Three R’s”, but also about good morals, literature and nature. This was the same school later attended by Anne Lister, and though 20 years later and in the similar era, neither lady made reference in their journals about the other, and although they were associated with the same people, they did not know each other.

The Halifax Piece Hall was opened on New Years Day 1779. Dorothy often stayed with a very good friend, Mary Pollard, who lived nearby and, from her bedroom window, she could see the comings and goings of the traders

Elizabeth Threlkeld married William Rawson, a partner in Rawson’s Bank, and this opened the door for Dorothy to improve her social connections. She was always very poor and could never afford to buy her own home and William Rawson was very good to her and often gave her books.

After she died in 1855, her journals were published posthumously in 1897. (AB)