Arthur Raistrick legacy defined in Dales anniversary year

Author David Joy, farmer Tom Lord and Dales Way champion Colin Speakman were among those brought together by the Yorkshire Geological Society in Grassington for a packed programme of talks and excursions.

A revered polymath, “Doc Raistrick”, as his closest friends called him, helped establish National Parks in England and Wales and served for 18 years on the former West Riding County Council National Park committee. He died in 1991 having spent 50 years living in the Wharfedale village of Linton.

John Knight, president of the Yorkshire Geological Society, introduced the weekend programme of lectures with a warning that Raistrick’s legacy would be critically examined. “This will not be hagiography,” he said.

Colin Speakman described Raistrick as a working class lad born in Saltaire, with family connections in Swaledale, Wensleydale and Wharfedale. He said that in the 1940s, Raistrick would regularly walk the nine miles from Linton to Kirkby Malham to meet John Dower, closely collaborating on Dower’s 1945 ‘National Parks in England and Wales’ parliamentary paper which laid the ground for the seminal 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act.

Mr Speakman said Raistrick’s greatest legacy was two-fold: his 330 books and research papers, and his influence on what he called his “many, many disciples”.

Settle farmer Tom Lord remembered the Pig Yard Club. His grandfather Tot Lord had attended Raistrick’s Workers Educational Association classes on geology, archaeology and local history in Settle in 1926. Tot and friends subsequently set up a meeting and research room in a pig yard, which over 30 years became a collecting place for fieldwork finds. Raistrick was a member of the Pig Yard Club and part of his legacy was to give ordinary people an opportunity to learn about their own history, Tom Lord said.

Mr Lord went on to give a fascinating commentary on Raistrick’s interpretation of the Roman incursion into the Yorkshire Dales. Raistrick had been “shocked” by an aerial image, taken in the 1950s, which clearly showed the outline remains of a large Roman marching camp on Malham Moor.

Until then Raistrick had argued there had been little Roman presence on the moors, arguing they were the preserve of the native Brigantes. Tom Lord quoted Raistrick’s description of the Brigantes as a people “who chose freedom with poverty on the high ground”.

“Raistrick was speaking about an Iron Age people, but really that was him,” said Mr Lord. Raistrick was a Quaker conscientious objector who was suspended without pay from his college lectureship in Newcastle during second world war; he and his wife sustained themselves entirely from their allotment in Linton – “freedom with poverty on the high ground”. Three speakers followed on Raistrick’s career as an academic, coal scientist and industrial archaeologist.

Trevor Faulkner, a University of Birmingham researcher who has been visiting caves in the Yorkshire Dales since the 1960s, outlined what he called Raistrick’s pioneering contribution to understanding deglaciation in the Yorkshire Dales.

John Marshall from the University of Southampton said after his research on glaciation , Raistrick was engaged as a lecturer at Armstrong College, Newcastle, where he became Britain’s premier palynologist, using pollen analysis to classify the properties of coal seams. Too many hours at the microscope led to eyesight problems for Raistrick and, overnight, his “prodigious output” on palynology stopped.

Richard Smith, representing the Northern Mine Research Society, spoke about Raistrick’s books and papers on lead mining, in particular his 1930 study of four Roman lead pigs found in the Yorkshire Dales. “Raistrick made a monumental contribution to mining history,” he said.

David Joy from Hebden Gill gave a talk rich in anecdote. As books editor of the Dalesman Publishing Company, Mr Joy worked with Raistrick on many of his popular publications during the 1960s and 70s.

“They were audiences rather than meetings with Arthur Raistrick. You listened. You didn’t interrupt,” said Mr Joy.

He revealed the rumpus which followed the publication of an excoriating review by Raistrick of a book by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby. “MH and JI were furious,” he said.

Mr Joy said the tables were turned when the Dalesman published a book which questioned some of Raistrick’s interpretations of landscape history. A frosty reception awaited when he next visited the Raistrick home. “I didn’t get my usual greetings of scones,” he said.

The next speakers – eminent archaeologists Roger Martlew and David Johnson – picked up the theme of critical reappraisal of Raistrick’s work. Representing the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, Roger Martlew said Raistrick had occupied a period between antiquarianism, which was characterised by a treasure hunting mentality, and the rigorous science of archaeology.

“There is so much we don’t understand about archaeology in the Dales. That’s OK to say that now. Back then you had to present a story. Maybe we can’t be as certain, as definitive, as Arthur Raistrick was,” he said.

David Johnson, who has collected several boxes of Raistrick’s drawings from the recently closed Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre and sent them to the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes for safekeeping, pointed to a site on Chapel Fell near the tarn as example of where Raistrick got it wrong, identifying remains as medieval in origin when in fact they were from the 17th century.

The final speaker of the day was Robert White, the first archaeologist employed by the Yorkshire Dales National Park committee of North Yorkshire County Council, which in 1997 became the independent Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. He described Raistrick as “one of the later pioneers” of the open air and countryside access movement, and once again drew attention to Raistrick’s “prodigious output”.

“Arthur’s work of mapping archaeological sites was the most important part of his legacy, and his work on industrial heritage was nationally important,” he said.

Robert White ended the day with a warning that climate change was the biggest threat facing the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the heritage so beloved by Arthur Raistrick.

“Two centuries of burning fossil fuels has resulted in an increasingly unstable climate which negatively impacts on the physical remains of the cultural heritage and the resilience of the natural environment,” he said.

The photograph of the speakers unwittingly omitted David Johnson, but included rock climber Angela Soper, who moderated some of the debate. She quipped that she added diversity to the group. Although all the speakers were men, the contributions of women in the fields of research Raistrick pioneered were frequently mentioned, not least those of Raistrick’s wife, Elizabeth, who was said by Colin Speakman to have written the classic book on schools in the Yorkshire Dales.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority was one of the supporting organisations for the event. Other partners and supporters acknowledged by the Yorkshire Geological Society were: Friends of the Dales, Greenhow Local History Club, Ingleborough Archaeology Group, Northern Mines Research Society, Upper Wharfedale Field Society, Upper Wharfedale Heritage Group and Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society.