Tag: Cobblers

Watch out for super-sleuth mums!

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Minnie Benson with one of her many ‘Lassies’. Picture by Camilla Veale

I was delighted to hear from reader Andy Brown who was inspired to get in touch after seeing my column featuring the Ryedale Folk Museum and the cobbler’s where my dad took me, not to get my shoes mended, but to get a haircut.

Andy said: “I loved your column…I can just about remember these old village tradespeople where you would get your bike puncture repaired at the garage or something mended at the forge or sawmill. I lost my dad this year and he was a truly frugal Yorkshireman. Utilising the local cobbler, if he had been entrusted to get my hair cut, would have been just the sort of thing he would do – that is if he didn’t resort to the sheep clippers! Your recollections made me smile.”

When I was a child, two sisters, Minnie and Fanny Benson, owned the petrol garage in the village and offered a bike repair service where a puncture could be mended for 10p a pop. They also offered baby-sitting, a service of which my parents took advantage most Saturday nights when they nipped across the road to the pub. The sisters owned a succession of border colliers, all of whom were called ‘Lassie’, the logic being that they only needed to shout one name for them all to come. I used to beg them to bring the dogs with them whenever they looked after us. Minnie would turn up, dogless, because she knew my mum was not a fan. But when the coast was clear, Fanny would often arrive with whichever Lassie it was, and the dog would then bound up the stairs with me to settle on my bed.

Lassie would be taken home before my parents returned, and I kept her visit just between myself and the sisters, or so I thought. It was only later that Mum told me she always knew when the dogs had been because of the trail of hair they left in their wake.

I wonder if you agree when I say that most mothers have superhuman detecting abilities that make Hercule Poirot look like an amateur. On one occasion, when I was very tiny, I was rummaging around my mum’s bedroom drawers when I found a strip of little round sweets, possibly blue or pink, which looked very appetising to me. There were lots in the packet so I was sure my mum would not notice one missing and was mildly disappointed to find that they tasted of nothing at all. You can imagine my shame when Mum confronted me the very next day about the missing pill, warning me about the dangers of eating something that I didn’t know what it was, even if it did look like a sweetie.

Of course, I was too young to know about contraceptive pills, and the fact that if ‘Tuesday’ had been eaten by someone other than Mum, it would be a dead giveaway. Now that I am a mother myself, I understand how unwitting young children leave trails of forensic evidence behind them, and thus we mothers can perpetuate our mythical super-sleuth status.

In the same column where I talked about my visit to the Ryedale Folk Museum, I also mentioned my concern about preserving my dad’s study. Andy Brown had an idea: “I understand your dilemma with your dad’s office. I always picture you leafing through his books and documents either for inspiration or to expand on your own ideas and have always felt you were the best possible custodian of his memory. But life does have a habit of needing to move on.

“Maybe the solution presents itself in your column – could your dad’s archive be donated to the Ryedale Folk Museum? I know it won’t be the same as having it with you but as your dad was such a key figure in preserving the folk culture of the Moors it would seem an appropriate location.”

I agree with Andy, and he might be surprised to learn that I did approach the museum several years ago with that very suggestion. Although they looked into it, at the time, they didn’t think they had an appropriate space for it, nor the resources to set it up.

I am looking at alternatives, though, and will warmly welcome any bright ideas!

Read more at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug

This column appeared in the Darlington and Stockton Times on 6th and Ryedale Gazette and Herald on 4th October 2023

Hair-raising visit to the cobbler

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The cobbler’s workshop at The Ryedale Folk Museum
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Jack Suggitt’s work bench
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The workshop is a replica of Jack Suggitt’s cobbler’s shop in Gilling East.

As I mentioned last week, a friend and I visited the Ryedale Folk Museum in Hutton-le-Hole recently which celebrates and preserves the traditional skills, crafts and trades of rural North Yorkshire. They have recreated a life-size blacksmith’s forge, a cooper’s workshop, a chemist, a saddler and a grocer’s among other things, and you experience a little of what it must have been like to live and work in these places long before modern advances led to their demise.

They have also completely rebuilt four cruck houses, named after the huge floor-to-ceiling curved A-frames that are the basis of the structure of the buildings. Carved out of sturdy oak, these crucks are linked by a great ridge tree forming the framework that supports the thatched roof. Walls were built inside to suit the owners’ needs, often with sleeping quarters at one end, and the fire and kitchen at the other. Known as ‘longhouses’, due to their linear design, they usually included space for livestock near the sleeping area. The animals generated precious heat that would help keep everyone warm, with the thatched roofs serving as insulation. Most houses of ordinary folk were thatched until the 19th century when pantiles began to be mass-produced.

The display that I was most keen to see was that of the cobbler because, as I proudly boasted to my friend, it is our own local shoemaker’s workshop that has been recreated.

The cobbler was called Jack Suggitt, and his little shop was behind his house on the main street in Gilling East near Helmsley. I have a distinct recollection of going with my dad to what was little more than a shed filled to the gills with tools, shoes, boots, lasts, and pots of polish and glue. It had a very distinctive smell, a pungent combination of leather and adhesive. It is one of my earliest memories, as Jack retired in 1969 when I was only two.

But what was so unique about going to Jack’s was that it was not to get my shoes mended. I was going to get my hair cut. It is funny how, as a child, you completely accept as normal things that to others might seem rather odd and it only dawned on me much later that not many people would visit the shoemaker for a haircut. But there I sat, stock still on the tall chair in his cluttered shop while he snipped my short, straight two-year-old barnet. I have no idea whether he was a skilled barber, and when I asked my mum about it, she struggled to remember why I would have gone there on that particular day. Firstly, she said, it was highly unusual that Dad would take me for a haircut, and secondly, had it been her, she would definitely not have chosen the cobbler-cum-barber for my hair trimming needs. I am guessing that it must have been a Saturday, when Dad was not working, and that perhaps there was a special occasion imminent for which we needed to be smart. Sometimes us parents leave it too late to get our children’s hair cut, and then we realise, just before we are going to a wedding, or to have school photos taken, that said hair is an unruly, shaggy mess unfit for public display. So then we rush them to wherever we can get a last-minute appointment. And perhaps that is how I ended up at the cobblers’ with my dad.

Places like the Ryedale Folk Museum do very important work in preserving ancient ways of life, and seeing Jack Suggitt’s workshop brought to mind a dilemma I am dealing with myself. What is going to happen to my dad’s study? At the moment, it is almost perfectly preserved, as if he has just nipped out for a moment, and it is an excellent example of a writer’s bolt-hole. It is stuffed full of the history of my dad’s life as a policeman and an author, with shelves full of his reference books and files full of cuttings and letters going right back to the start of his career in the 1950s. It needs preserving, but the time is going to come when we will have to leave this house. If had my way, I’d lift up the whole room and take it with me. But I can’t.

So what on earth are we going to do with it?

Read more at countrymansdaughter.com. Follow me on Twitter @countrymansdaug

This column appeared in the Darlington and Stockton Times on 18th and Ryedale Gazette and Herald on 16th August 2023