00:00Welcome to Tanhill Inn. I am Andrew Healds. I'm the owner of the Tanhill since 2018 and today we
00:13are here with the old previous landladies and we're just bringing them all together and have
00:18great reunion and talk about all the history and all their very very fond memories. I mean we feel
00:23very privileged to have as many landladies here as we can. Not all of them unfortunately are with
00:28us anymore so we felt it's time to get everybody together and get everything documented, recorded
00:33in all the various formats of modern day and just really get their memories and all their history
00:39down you know on paper and into the archive. I've got fond memories and I keep hearing about all of
00:45the other stories and great tales and this is one of the greatest things for me today is to be talking
00:51face to face with all the landladies and interacting with them and you know sharing my memories as well
00:56as their memories. My name is Audrey Yeardley but when we lived at Tanhill I had my married name we
01:03were Clifford and we moved here strangely enough the anniversary will be one week ahead from today
01:12on October the 28th 1961 and we moved it was snowing and there were two journalists here who couldn't
01:23wait to get away because the weather was turning really bad and the furniture man whose name was
01:29was Ernest Hemingway they asked him what he thought about delivering us to this place and he said
01:37it's very isolated and I never want to come here again and off he went. Well we were here for just
01:44under six years and for me it was a magic time. Very very challenging because it was back in the day when
01:51there were no facilities we had calorgas lighting we had coal fires obviously the traditional one
01:59and it was calorgas cooking we had no electricity in fact it was a year before we got a generator
02:06and it was an ex-war department one that we bought from MASC and when we got that we were able to have
02:14an eight valve wireless which used to fire up and we used to listen to all the great music because
02:22this was the 60s and there's no better time than the 1960s to have been up here it was an amazing place
02:29they came from miles around and we met so many wonderful people sadly my husband was unwell when we
02:37came and his health declined so I had to give up my dream in I suppose it would be late 1967
02:47and on the day that we left two of the local farmers George Clarkson and Todd Hagen came up
02:55and they paid the compliment of singing beautiful Swelldale to us as a farewell
03:01they were some of our first customers and when the locals were really the main ones the biggest
03:11event during the year and still is was Tan Hill Show on the last Thursday in May when hundreds would
03:20come here and the landscape would be full of cars I've got so many stories I've got the unpublished book
03:29of the time that I was here that tells you all kinds of experiences that there isn't time to go
03:35in for now but we met the most incredible people who were reliving their own kind of stories because
03:45this is the place where you can write your own script and you can be who you want to be we didn't
03:50know we could cope until the really bad winter came and that is the the one that's gone into memory
03:58is a legend in 1962 to 63 we were snowed in for 13 weeks and one day and the farmers towards the end
04:09were building their own snow plows but we had to manage with what food we had because it was very
04:16difficult to get out the nearest shop was Willie Carter's down at Langthwaite food I've got my little
04:24read books of the prices of food and you would weep to know how the prices have changed you as they
04:30are now but we just had to cope and I can tell you about a hundred different ways of how to cook
04:37potatoes because for that sometimes was what we survived on we had two young children Marcus and Simon
04:45we had a dog called Toby and we had a cat who produced three kittens I called the mother cat
04:53mini vole strangler for some reason and we all lived here during that time making do and doing the best
05:00we could and we lived among the rats because it was so cold that the rats borrowed their way through
05:07the door and they lived in their little homes under the floorboards and you could hear them and we had to
05:14hide the potatoes because they were nicking them for their own food I on the day that we left I made
05:22a promise I held the broom in my hand I was standing outside and I made a promise to the landscape one
05:28day I will come back but it was 21 years before I did that was after my husband died and I bought an old
05:36house in Kirby Stephen and it took me 10 years to make it beautiful and then I took off to Scotland
05:42but in the meantime I used to drive up here because it was so wonderful to come back to the landscape
05:50so I knew I knew Tracy who'll come later this evening I didn't know Sue so much but we've made we've become
06:02friends since because we've all got our stories to tell I believe there was um there was a title for the
06:09gathering three land ladies and the landlord's daughter it should have been four but sadly Margaret
06:15Baines died just not so long ago and they were here for the longest time they were here for 20 years
06:22and Tracy beat our record and there were itinerants in between you know who for various reasons didn't stay
06:31the course but for me it was a challenge you know how many years that is so I've been back and forth but
06:39actually it's a privilege to be alive and and to see the people with their very different experiences
06:47we're all very different people but we the common ground is town hill and we all have a great love for it
06:55well my name is Sue Hanson and I came as a manager and as a co-owner with my then husband
07:06in 78 79 and 84 85 it was it was quite extreme constantly busy they were very long days that went into
07:23early hours because there weren't that many licensing hours to speak of it it was a case of
07:32you worked until the last ones went home yeah and sometimes you'd beg them to go home
07:39because it was two in the morning I used to get the yard brush and child's brush
07:45but no it's one of those very very special places it was intensely busy all through the summer so you
07:56didn't see much weather you were just working non-stop and then when it cooled down and the first snow I
08:05remember came on October the 16th there was a slight dusting outside and then you started worrying about
08:14how would you get your supplies and wait for the roads to to be opened and they were very good on both sides
08:23you know the Yorkshire side and the Cumbria side at clearing them so the snowblower was a big
08:31sorry a big event and you'd dash out and get your order in wherever you were going and pick up all these
08:40supplies and the deliveries were very good so often thought about how ever did you cope I've longed to
08:52meet you properly we've spoken on the phone yeah and I've just so longed to meet you I think you'd learn
09:00your way into a coping strategy it's like when you're baking a cake you've got ingredients and
09:06they're the only ingredients you've got so you've got to make the best of what you've got we didn't
09:12have deliveries but we um David went down to Willie Carter the shop in Langthwaite he may not have been
09:18here when yeah and I I used to give David I've still got them my little order books with um yeah with you know and the prices there are
09:30incredible compared and like you I didn't drive so I didn't get out very often but I made the most of it
09:39so Barnard Castle Kendall and uh but mostly I had to be here you know for if the customers came with
09:47your with your boys yes how yeah just bringing up two boys here so ladies being back here again brings
09:54back lots of memories oh my gosh coming back here again brings back lots of memories oh yes yes well
10:02like you when I bet you felt the same when that door opened you didn't know who was coming in
10:08it was a situation and you went with it and it was like you were in a movie and then they went out
10:15and another movie came through the door so it was brilliant wasn't it for yeah for making it up as you
10:24went along really
10:25you
10:26you
10:55.
11:25.
11:55.
12:25.
12:55.
12:57.
12:59.
13:01.
13:03.
13:05.
13:07.
13:09.
13:11.
13:13.
13:15.
13:17.
13:19.
13:21.
13:23.
13:25.
13:27.
13:29.
13:31.
13:33.
13:35.
13:37.
13:39.
13:41.
13:43.
13:45.
13:47.
13:49.
13:51.
13:53.
13:55.
13:57.
13:59.
14:01.
14:03.
14:05.
14:07.
14:09.
14:11.
14:13.
14:15.
14:17.
14:19.
14:21.
14:23.
14:25.
14:27.
14:29.
14:31.
14:33.
14:35.
14:37.
14:39.
14:41.
14:43.
14:45.
14:47.
14:49.
14:53.
14:55.
14:57.
14:59.
15:01.
15:03.
15:05.
15:07.
15:09.
15:11.
15:13.
15:15.
15:17.
15:25.
15:27.
15:29.
15:31.
15:33.
15:35.
15:37.
15:39.
15:41.
15:43.
15:55.
15:58.
15:59.
16:00.
16:01newcastle brown was also popular with lots of people and i understand that there's a newcastle
16:10hospital that has a flood um a ward devoted to those who drank too much of it it's known as the
16:17newcastle brown ward or that used to be back in the day but they didn't all drink that here
16:24but we we provided we provided all kinds um that they would need it's an
Comments