Sound Recordings, North Yorkshire

Description

[Collector announcement, in which he provides background information on his fieldwork project, the locations visited and informants interviewed; he also comments on the quality of the recordings, the informants and the interviews, and his hopes for what the recordings will show of his work and interviewing techniques.] Male informant, recorded in Cawood, talks about road and rail transport and travel; the working day on a farm; wages on leaving school; changes in farming (mechanisation); harvest time; labourers employed at Cawood Castle (near Selby) to make hay; bricklayers; bushbeating; threshing; Good Friday tea, service and supper at chapel; schooling from the age of two-and-a-half; traffic and transportation of goods on the River Ouse. [Tr. 4] Male informant, recorded in Grassington, talks about childhood pranks; leisure time (bird nesting, collecting wild flowers); involvement in haymaking and lambing as a child; sports - involvement in a rugby club, football, cricket and athletics; competitions and prizes; the local area; lead mines; employment opportunities - quarries, mill, agriculture, transport; farming and smallholdings; ploughs and ploughing; employment opportunities for present-day youth; decline in the number of bird species in the area, and the effect of modern weed killers and pesticides; poaching rabbits. [Tr. 5] Male informant, recorded in Grassington, talks about his working life, including farm jobs, asylum job during the war, driving, fish and poultry business, greengrocer's shop; death of his wife; places lived; never travelled abroad; travel in Britain; working day on the farm; preference for working with livestock. [Tr. 6] Male informant, recorded in Spofforth, talks about his Army service during World War One; travel abroad, including Russia during the Revolution; work as a pageboy, delivering letters and waiting on servants [?location]; serving with the Army at Ypres, Salonica, Bulgaria, in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Russia (guarding Anglo-American oil interests in Georgia); engagement with the Turks, and relations with the Russian people; the effect of revolution on food and money; Grassington village - new houses, workers commuting from the village, use of cars. [Tr. 7] Male informant, recorded in Grassington, talks about changes in farming and mechanisation; livestock breeding in the Yorkshire Dales; local dairy produce (including blue milk) sold in local shops; discuss old photographs of the village; first motor coach in the village, 1908; changes in the village; family; changes in local farming; industry in the area - cotton mill, lime quarries; water-powered electricity station; water-powered cotton mill at Linton; compares past/present cost of farm implements and machinery; haymaking, past and present. [Tr. 8] Female informant, recorded in Cawood, talks about her family; the village; time spent away from the village; school; starting work, aged fourteen, in a grocery shop; supermarkets and goods sold in grocery shop; leisure time - going to Shows by bicycle; making own amusement. [Tr. 9] Male informant [location not known] talks about the Yorkshire Show, past and present; Irish cattle sold at York; cattle breeding. [Tr. 1] Male informant [location not known] talks about haymaking and haystacks; farm carts and waggons; number of men and horses involved in haymaking; mechanisation and changes in farming; working day during the harvest; wages; wife's parents and farm; growing and selling potatoes and peas; pig-killing. [Tr. 2] Male informant, recorded in Cawood, talks about his birthplace ( Askrigg); moving to Cawood as a child; his father; informant's farm; describes the soil quality and the effect of the weather on it. [Tr. 3] Male informant [location not known] describes a working day as a builder's apprentice; labouring work; tools and the use of machinery in modern times; scaffolding; pay at end of apprenticeship; work on the Olympia Mills oil extraction plant at Selby. [Tr. 4]

Metadata

Identifier wyl5kn85
IRN 414910
Class Mark LAVC/SRE/A859r
Level Item
Type of Record Archives - ISAD(G)
Peristent Link http://prototype1.library.leeds.ac.uk/wyl5kn85
Collection(s) Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture
Category Archive
Parent Record Audiotape Sound Recordings
Creator(s) Pitkannen, Hannu
Date [1960s/early 1970s]
Size and Medium 1 x 12.7cm open reel spool, Duration: 92' 37".

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