I WAS saddened to hear that Daleswoman Hannah Hauxwell passed away on January 31st. Hannah rose to fame in the 1970s following the Yorkshire Television documentary ‘Too Long A Winter’ which filmed her arduous existence on her remote farm in Baldersdale. Her everyday struggles against the elements with no running water or electricity touched the nation, and her lovely, engaging personality led to several books and further TV appearances.

She left the farm and moved to a nearby cottage in the late 1980s, but, because the land surrounding it had been cultivated using traditional methods for so long, it was taken over by the Durham Wildlife Trust and is now a nature reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest, known as Hannah’s Meadow.

Hannah’s hardy lifestyle may have contributed to her living to the ripe old age of 91, but, as my dad reveals in his column of 16th February 1978, there is a legend of a Yorkshireman who outlived her by an incredible 78 years! Henry Jenkins is said to have been born in Ellerton-on-Swale in 1501, and the Bolton parish records show he died on December 9th 1670. Unfortunately, births did not have to be registered until 1538, so the claim cannot be verified, but there are several reasons why they are believed, and why Jenkins deserves his memorial at St Mary’s Church in Bolton-on-Swale.

We know most of his young life was spent in agriculture, and as an adult he earned a living as a thatcher and fisherman, although was always a poor man. The most reliable account comes from Anne Saville, who was visiting her sister, Elizabeth Wastell, at Bolton Old Hall. She was intrigued by the elderly gentlemen who wandered into the kitchen asking for alms. Anne, who was well educated, wrote a letter to Dr Tancred Robinson, fellow of the Royal Society, explaining what she had heard from the old man. He authenticated her account and published it in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions, suggesting further investigation into how Jenkins had lived so long.

Anne had asked Jenkins how old he was, and he’d replied that he was around 162 or 163. She writes: “I asked him what kings he remembered. He said Henry VIII. I asked him what public thing he could longest remember. He said Flodden Field. I asked him which king was there. He said , None, he was in France, and the Earl of Surrey was general.”

He went on to tell Anne how at the age of 10 or 12, he was sent to Northallerton with a cart full of arrows which was then given to a bigger boy to take to the army. Anne checked her history books and learned that the battle of Flodden Field had been fought 152 years earlier and that if he had been 10 or 12 then it really did make him around 163 years old when she spoke to him. She discovered that indeed, bows and arrows were used at Flodden Field, and that Jenkins was right about the Earl of Surrey, and that Henry VIII was indeed at Tournay in France. For an uneducated man who could neither read nor write, and one who had been questioned on the spur of the moment, his historical recollections were flawless. Anne went on to question other aged village residents, who said that since their own childhoods, Henry Jenkins had always been elderly.

Because of his age, he was often called upon to settle disputes over rights of way, and he was called to testify in such a case at York Assizes in 1620. He swore on oath to having 120 years of memory, meaning he was alive when the original dispute arose around 100 years earlier. The judge did not believe him, but after Jenkins said he was employed as a butler by Lord Conyers of Hornby Hall at the time, when they checked the records, sure enough his name was listed.

There is no way of knowing for sure how old Henry Jenkins was, but there are claims of a Bolivian living to 123 years old, an Indonesian to 145, an Ethiopian to 160, and an Azerbaijani to 168. But it is French woman Jeanne Louise Calment who holds the place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest person to have been proven to have lived for 122 years and 164 days before she died in 1997.