Sylvia Crookes

IN 1967, Margaret Batty, wife of the local Methodist minister, published a book, Gunnerside Chapel And Gunnerside Folk, and followed it in 1985 with Bygone Reeth.

There has been a demand for a reprint of the books, and both are now available at Reeth Museum, Ghyllfoot Restaurant in Gunnerside, at the chapels and by post from Mary Clarke, The Hagg, Fremington, Richmond, North Yorkshire DL11 6AU. Price for each is £4, and postage for one or both is £1.50.

These modest books trace the social history of Swaledale through the lives of the chapels, and those who built, supported and loved them. They are filled with the names of early Methodists and their exploits – names which still occur all up the dale, as generations of Calverts, Rutters, Blenkirons, Metcalfes and Spensleys live and work in those same villages.

You can read how John Wesley, travelling at the age of 77 from Leyburn to Reeth, abandoned his horse and carriage and rode from Bellerby to Reeth on horseback; and how two of the earliest and liveliest young Methodist leaders, the Spensley brothers, were killed in the Old Gang Mine.

Some anecdotes would fit into Gervaise Phynn’s stories of education in the Dales. In Reeth, a child viewing the new stained glass window with the Good Shepherd holding a lamb, remarked critically, “It’s nobbut a half-breed”, and at Sunday school one day, when told about the parable of the 99 sheep, and asked why the shepherd would go out and find the 100th, a small boy said, “It’d be the tup”.