Back of Rock View, Embsay, 1940

Image: © Mrs Grace Eileen Marshall, n?e Ryder, later Dodds. Taken: 22 Jul 1940

First of all, let's deal with the "Rock View". The terrace of houses looking out over the Delacres estate was called "Rock View" when I lived there as a boy, in number 4. I was born in 4 Mill Holme in January 1940, but this photograph shows me on my father's knee clearly aged less than 1yo so we must have moved from Mill Holme soon after I was born. Rock View was owned by the Tannery for its workers and my grandfather Samuel was their hired stonemason. So he must have wangled a 2 up 2 down for his son Robert, wife Eileen, my elder sister and me. I remember in my teens going up to the tannery each week to pay the rent which was, I think, 13/6 a week. I used to go grouse beating on the Duke of Devonshire's estate and be shot at by MacMillan & Ormsby-Gore for 15/- a day and I thought this is great. I can marry Daphne, work for the Duke, pay the rent with one days earnings etc etc. Instead I ran off and became Prof Robin Marshall FRS etc etc. If you look at this photo, you will notice a dark square in the wall of the sloping shed roof, just by my Dad's left knee. This is where the coal was thrown in. That shed had a 2nd utility and that was the one and only toilet. I recall I used to take a hammer to the ice in the morning at 6:30 before going on my paper round or else there would be some splash back. You may think that 13/6 a week was cheap but the houses had no electricity. The Tannery thought that electricity could wait. The family owing the Tannery then were the Brooksbanks who lived in a house of Downton Abbey proportions on Heber's Mount in Ilkley. My maiden aunt Ginny, my father's sister, was the Brooksbank's cook and Maîtresse'd. She persuaded the Brooksbanks to take me in for 2 weeks one summer, my father now having not survived the war. She told them, "You need to take a look at this lad." To the Brooksbanks' credit they drove me in their Bentley to Headingley to watch Hutton and Bradman (1948) and then to Bertram Mills circus. They let me use their library where I devoured their encyclopedias, learning about all the things that an 8yo would not otherwise have known. Then they sent me back to 4 Rock View, just as I was getting to know their daughter Esmerelda. Some time, late 50s early 60s maybe, Skipton Rural District Council decided to rename us "Rock View Terrace" by which it is still known. They also renamed Low Lane. For reasons unknown to me and without my permission, they renamed it Shires Lane.

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