Arthur Whitehead 1910 -2000

Arthur Whitehead was born in January 1910 in Paradise Square, Sheffield.

In 1916 his family moved to Fern Glen farm on Hathersage Road where Mr. Whitehead senior, though lacking an agricultural background, took up farming augmenting his income with a milk round. These were the middle years of the Great War and, since many of the established milkmen had been called up or volunteered for war service, there was surplus milk in the Dore area which

helped to establish an extensive milkround extending as far as Ecclesall and Nether Edge.

Initially deliveries were made by pony and trap but, with increasing prosperity; a Model T Ford van was purchased from Brook Shaws at a cost of œ259.

From the age of 6 Arthur attended Dore Church School where the Headmaster was Mr.F.C.Bone. Two other teachers of the day were Miss Jane Eyre, from Hathersage, and Miss Hodgekinson of Totley. Arthur's contemporaries at school included Willis Bishop and his brother Colin from Owlet farm, Bill Haslam, Claud Wragg and Garnet Fisher.

One day during the closing stages of the war, the funeral took place at Dore Church of an aviator shot down in the Channel. The burial was accompanied by a volley of rifle fire, which caused considerable alarm amongst the pupils who thought that Dore was at the forefront of invasion.  

In due course Arthur joined the Dore Church Choir under choirmaster Farnsworth, the main attraction of membership being the choir suppers held at the Hare & Hounds prepared by the landlady Mrs. Eyre. One night, after choir practice, Arthur arrived home to find that his father, more inebriated than usual had been brought home from the Devonshire Arms leaving his pony and trap tethered outside. Arthur was instructed to walk down and bring them home. A few nights later, walking past the Devonshire Arms, he noticed the pony tethered outside and, thinking it had been forgotten again drove it home only to find that the old man was still in the pub and had to walk home. Arthur was chased round the house with a whip! Soon after purchase of the Model T, and with no previous instruction on driving techniques, father was proceeding down Dore Road and, wishing to arrest his progress, but knowing nothing about brakes, being used only to horse transport, he shouted "Whoa, Whoa!" without much effect and sped straight across the main road and through the railings around the station yard.

In the early post war years Fern Glen House was occupied by Major Hugh McArthur Joel who had a file cutting business in West Street. Arthur helped to build the Clarion Hut from war surplus Kitchener huts, on adjoining land. Apart from the Round House at Ringinglow the Clarion Hut was the only place he could buy chocolate, but his father stopped him going there when he heard that the ramblers were wont to sing The Red Flag. At the end of the war a street party was held in the village and all the children from Dore School had a good meal, greatly enjoyed after the privation of the war years.

Favourite occupations of the time were nude bathing in a pond on land adjoining Dore Moor House known as Cliff Side, sucking lemons whilst listening to the brass band playing on the recreation ground and playing cricket in the field next to Ash House cottage. The occupier of Ash House at the time was Reg. Webster, a solicitor of some wealth whose father had been Lord Mayor of Sheffield and who bought a new Sunbeam car every year! His chauffeur, Mr. Stoddard, took Arthur and his friend John Robson to various trials and hill climbs run by the Sheffield & Hallamshire Motor Club. These experiences fostered a life long interest in motor sport in general and motorcycling in particular.

At the age of 15 Arthur bought his first motor cycle, a Cotton, which was to prove the forerunner of a multitude of motor cycles and cars. Bikes however were the overriding passion, a devotion which was to last until the end of his life.

In 1921 the family moved from Dore to Nether Edge where Arthur established a motor repair business. In January of this year he celebrated his 90th. Birthday but, sadly, he passed away a month or two later. His memories of Dore however, remained fresh in his mind to the end of his days.                                              

Jim Trotter

Ed. Based on an interview shortly before Arthur's death.

Hare & Hounds building

Betty's mother and father were landlord and lady of the Hare and Hounds before the Clarkes. I believe that Betty was born at the Hare. Mr and Mrs Hurst had three daughters, Betty, being the youngest by a number of years. Joyce and Monica, the two eldest, took over the Post Office from Mr Spooner in 1926. I believe that Mr Spooner had been invalided out of the army when he took

over the Post Office from Mr Jackson in 1916. The Post Office then was in the Corner Shop across the road, and before it transferred to the Hare building, this a drapers as can be seen from one of the photos. The section of the building next to the drapers was a one up, one down cottage before being converted into a General Store. When I was a child the store was run by a Mrs Bryant who sold a multitude of items.

The last person to run the shop was Mrs Ethel Thorne. She sold groceries, haberdashery, wools, pottery, chocolates and glass. It was a wonder how she managed to cram so much into such a small space, but she was a very good business woman and well organised. Over the shop, up a flight of twisty, very steep stone steps was a stock room. The bacon slicing machine was up there.

Those were the days when you could buy proper bacon, not the plastic rubbish sold today.

I think there was a tap and a stone sink at the bottom of the steps, but there was certainly no toilet. Use had to be made of the one in the Hare back yard. I guess the post office, butchers and Mrs Thorps closed in the 60's, when the Hare was extended.

Jean Dean

And so this was Christmas

The old Heathens' Feasting Day, in honour of Saturn their Idol-God, the Papist's Massing Day, the Profane Man's Ranting Day, the Superstitious Man's Idol Day, the Multitudes Idle Day, Satan's - that Adversary's - Working Day, the True Christian Man's Fasting Day..." Such was a Puritan's miserable view of Christmas day as described in 1656 by a certain Hezekiah Woodward.

Without doubt, Hezekiah would have been a staunch supporter of the Christmas Day fast imposed twelve years earlier, and, better still, the abolition of Christmas ordered by Cromwell in 1647.

In isolated areas like the Peak this ban was widely ignored. Immediately the monarch was restored, though, the festive season was enjoyed with all the old good humour throughout the land; by the 1660's celebrations were back in full swing at the big houses, nowhere more so in the Peak than at Haddon Hall which offered generous hospitality to all-comers during the twelve days of Christmas,

Haddon Christmases were legendary and one story has been handed down from the days when the grandson of John Manners and Dorothy Vernon was Earl of Rutland. It is said that a butcher who supplied meat to the Hall, one John Taylor of Darley Dale, delivered an order during the traditional  open house' period and at the same time stole two pounds of butter. For some time butter had been going missing every week, so the butler of the small-beer cellar and the butler of the strong beer were keeping watch. They saw butcher Taylor pick up the butter, putting one pound inside the left side of his coat and the other to his right.

The strong beer cellar butler came out of hiding and insisted that the 18 stone butcher accept a flagon of strong beer, sitting him right beside the fire. Soon the butter on one side of his body began to melt and trickle right down into his shoes. "Why Jack", said the butler, "you seem a great deal fatter on one side than the other. Turn yourself round and warm the other side". The uncomfortable man could hardly argue and the butler would not hear of him leaving the fireside until he was well-greased on both sides. As the butcher squelched through the Hall the melted butter was still running onto the tops of his shoes, and the Earl enjoyed the joke as much as anything else that Christmas.

As big as the king Even at Christmas the luxury of butter was unknown to the parish apprentices at Litton and Cressbrook Mills in the first quarter of the 19th century. The memoirs of one, known only as John, tell of his journey from London to Litton in a December snowstorm, huddled on top of a coach in thin clothing and barely alive. But soon it would be Christmas, with the promise of roast beef and Plum pudding.

The only beef the apprentices ever saw was given to them to be roasted over a fire during the night. Alas, the girls who took on the task were frightened by a ghostly 'boggard' and they fled; by morning the precious joint was burnt to a cinder.

Once a year, on Christmas Eve, dry flour cake was handed out - without butter - and the apprentices were allowed a pint of ale. In later life John recalled: "To have seen us walking up and down flourishing the flour cake in one hand, and the can of ale in the other, would have made anyone think we were the happiest mortals in the world. We felt ourselves, for once, as big as a king. The spice pudding, of which we were told so many tales, never came but once a year and then consisted of cold, sad, suetty pudding, with two or three currants and raisins in it".

White Christmas

For the more fortunate country child, with a comfortably-off family and a happy home, Christmas usually lived up to excited expectations. In our village - the village being Cromford of a hundred years ago - Alison Uttley described the thrill of visiting Mr. Green's newspaper shop opposite the junction with Water Lane. At Christmastime the seasonal stock included cards, showy spangles and baubles to decorate homemade kissing bunches. An upstairs parlour was converted into a toy shop and the odours of cardboard and tin wafted down the steep dark staircase, promising brand new dolls, shiny animals for the model farmyard, clockwork toys and trains. On Christmas Day everyone walked briskly to church;  peals of bells from neighbouring churches carried through the still air, but where the road ran beside the Derwent even the summons of their own single bell was drowned by the roar of the water. Only the squire from Willersly Castle was

driven to church, in his fine carriage with coachman and groom, and high-stepping horses. The white Christmases were loved best, when snow had to be stamped from dozens of pairs of pairs of boots in the church porch. Inside the church had been transformed into a woodland.

Alison Uttley recalled how "with senses alert and eyes wide we stared at the flowers and berries, we breathed the fragrance of the evergreens, mingled with the scent of the ladies, and the smell of pomatum on the hair of men and boys, and the paraffin in the lamps. We saw branches of scarlet berried holly on the pulpit and in the long narrow windows... Boughs of yew and trails of ivy were wound round the brass spiral lamp stands at the ends of each pew".

Once the squire, his wife and children were seated at the front of the church, and their servants in their own two rows of pews, the choir led the congregation in "Christians awake, salute this happy morn". The singing of the boys and voices of blacksmith, carpenter, wheelwright, bank clerk and farm workers drowned out the very organ, but it was the resounding bass notes of stout,scarlet faced Mr. Ball that were admired above all.

"A wind like an axe"

Another Christmas Day, that of 1918, was described in a letter from D.H. Lawrence, writing to thank Katherine Mansfield for a parcel delivered by the postman - on foot through the snow – to his cottage at Middleton by Wirksworth on Christmas Day. In spite of his deep longing to move to warmer climes now that the war was finally over. Lawrence was reluctantly captivated by a white Christmas in the Peak.

He and his wife set out to walk to Cromford on Christmas morning - "all white and snowy and sunny, with a wind like an axe... I wish you could have been there on the hill summit - the valley all white and hairy with trees below us... the grey stone fences drawn in a network over the snow, all very clear in the sun. We ate sweets, and slithered downhill, very steep and tottering".

From Cromford the Lawrences continued on foot to Ambergate to be met by motor car and taken to share Christmas with relations - "My God", wrote Lawrence, "what masses of food here, turkey, large tongues, long wall of roast loin of pork, pork-pies, sausages, mince-pies, dark cakes covered with almonds, cheese-cakes, lemon-tarts, jellies, endless masses of food, with whisky, gin, port wine, burgundy, muscatel. We played charades - the old people of 67 playing away

harder than the young ones - and lit the Christmas tree, and drank healths, and sang, and roared - Lord above".

And so, whatever Hezekiah Woodward would have thought, that is our kind of Christmas – a Christian Man's Feasting Day.

Julie Bunting

Jean recalls

Dore has in the past, had a fair share of eccentrics. Jack Slack was one such. He lived at the beginning of the 1900's. He was supposed to have suffered a broken heart, being disappointed in love. (Haven't we all?). Though a well educated  man, reputedly from a good family, he chose to live a life of poverty and lost all sense of self regard. He was a kind cheerful man and was well loved by the children of Dore. He was a great lover of nature and the beauty of the world, which he appears to have seen in all things. He seems to have spent much of his life day-dreaming. The story goes that he was once asked to do a job on a roof on Bushey Wood, but so entranced did he become whilst up there he completely forgot what he had gone up there for in the first place.

He was buried in Dore Churchyard, and so much did the children of Dore admire him and his stories, that for years they continued to place the flowers he so loved on his grave, in his memory. Another such, but of an entirely different mein was Frankie Fisher. Frankie was the son of a local farmer and spent the later years of his life in the barn amongst the cattle at Dore Church Lane

Farm. As can be imagined he did not smell of Channel No5, and was known to clear the Taproom at the Hare on more than one occasion, because of the aroma. As children we used to be sent by my Aunt Ada with cups of Bovril for him. I was a bit scared of him, but I guess he was harmless enough.

Before going into the Hare he used to drink a basin of cold water. This he said meant he didn't need to drink so much ale. When he died Mr. and Mrs Clark from the Hare paid for his funeral. There was a rumour that he had a fortune buried somewhere in the neighbourhood, but had forgotten where. If anyone finds it, I shall expect a share, being an  O so distant relative'!

Albert Coates lived in a trailer at the back of Causewayhead Farm, which his family had tenanted for many years. He was a short stocky man with a head of bright red hair. When he got excited

his face went as red as his hair. Albert kept a cart horse and cart and did odd jobs on many of the

farms round here. Summer or winter, every morning he stripped down to his trousers and washed himself in cold water in the open air. He was quite particular about cleanliness. He suffered a stroke in the mid-fifties from which he never recovered. He never married and had a very poor opinion of women.

At about the same time as Albert lived in Dore, there was Gudie Brusher who also lived in a trailer, this time at the back of the Barracks on Townhead Road. I have no idea what his real name was. His family lived down Abbeydale. If he worked, I couldn't tell you what at. Rumour had it that he was a deserter from the 14/18 war and perhaps he was. I don't know. I know he was always willing to look after the village children if their had other things to do. They knew the

children were safe with Gudie. Today I suppose the poor man would have been suspect. He was never married. How strange that most of the eccentrics were single men.

Jean Dean

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