West Riding - Life of a Yorkshire Family - 1940's

[The Wiser Hatter]

[video=youtube_share;lkpWPRcAZbU]http://youtu.be/lkpWPRcAZbU[/video]

 

[esteban68]

great little film that I'd not seen before, life carried on pretty much in the same way until the mid late 70's....Living in North Derbyshire I spend quite a bit of time in the 'West Riding' for work and pleasure and the countryside is still the same, you can still here the old dialect fairly frequently, much of the industry has gone though!
For the real dialect you need to watch 'Kes'.

 

[Gingerella72]

I enjoyed this, thank you for sharing! My ancestors come from Yorkshire so I've always had a soft spot in my heart for that area of England and like to learn about it.

 

[Peter_E]

I was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, and grew up until age 8 on Skipton Rd between the River Aire and the Leeds & Liverpool canal, so a lot of this little movie is very nostalgic for me.

But, I'll tell thee summat for nowt ....

Those mills were nowhere near as idyllic as the movie portrays: They were brutal places. Blake didn't use the phrase "dark satanic mills" for no reason. Whether they were Lancashire cotton mills or Yorkshire woolen mills, for a mill worker, riding their bike to work in the dark, cold rainy winter morning, clocking in for countless hours in the cacophonous bowels, then riding their bike home in the dark, winter rain again, was not a romantic existence; it was miserable drudgery that few can imagine these days.

And that lass playing Jane Eyre was not from Yorkshire, not with that accent.

For the real dialect you need to watch 'Kes'.

Not to nit-pick, "Kes" was set in the mining area around Barnsley. The dialect is a bit different. At age 8, we moved to the Sheffield area (Dronfield, actually - you will know it estaban68) and I remember being misunderstood many times when I used the West Riding words. Hard to believe, huh? but true!

Anyway, the West Riding officially no longer exists. After at least a thousand years, the powers that be decreed it out of existence. There is West Yorkshire now, but it isn't the same area (smaller) than the West Riding was.

 

[angeljenny]

The last 6 or so generations of my family have been born and have lived in Yorkshire. We don't travel far! I love Yorkshire!

 

[esteban68]

Re Kes it was indeed Pete E and your right about mill work, industrial deafness for many and missing digits a plenty! and the travel to and from work in all weathers, no subway just trudge and drudge!
There probably was/is no single dialect for the 'West Riding' as it covered a very wide area(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Riding_of_Yorkshire) where I live in Chesterfield which tha'll probably know mi duck has a vastly different accent to Sheffield which is just 10 miles away!

I was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, and grew up until age 8 on Skipton Rd between the River Aire and the Leeds & Liverpool canal, so a lot of this little movie is very nostalgic for me.

But, I'll tell thee summat for nowt ....

Those mills were nowhere near as idyllic as the movie portrays: They were brutal places. Blake didn't use the phrase "dark satanic mills" for no reason. Whether they were Lancashire cotton mills or Yorkshire woolen mills, for a mill worker, riding their bike to work in the dark, cold rainy winter morning, clocking in for countless hours in the cacophonous bowels, then riding their bike home in the dark, winter rain again, was not a romantic existence; it was miserable drudgery that few can imagine these days.

And that lass playing Jane Eyre was not from Yorkshire, not with that accent.



Not to nit-pick, "Kes" was set in the mining area around Barnsley. The dialect is a bit different. At age 8, we moved to the Sheffield area (Dronfield, actually - you will know it estaban68) and I remember being misunderstood many times when I used the West Riding words. Hard to believe, huh? but true!

Anyway, the West Riding officially no longer exists. After at least a thousand years, the powers that be decreed it out of existence. There is West Yorkshire now, but it isn't the same area (smaller) than the West Riding was.

 

[dhermann1]

So how accurate was the dialect in All Creatures great and Small???

 

[Peter_E]

So how accurate was the dialect in All Creatures great and Small???

I don't know. I don't think I have ever seen the movie. But, this (from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071118/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv) makes me think it probably wasn't very accurate:
"Although born in Sunderland, Herriot spent the first twenty-three years of his life in Glasgow, and never lost the accent, as can be heard in television interviews. Simon Ward however, plays him as a Londoner."

Most TV shows seem to not be very accurate. The have people with Somerset accents in Lancashire, etc. "Downton Abbey" does a pretty good job with their Yorkshire accents, I think, even though Highclere Castle isn't in Yorkshire in real life. But, notice I said: accent. If the show's characters talked with a true dialect, you would probably need subtitles to understand what they said.

As esteban68 says, in 30 miles there can be a discernible difference in the accent. People can tell you're a stranger. TV and so forth is tending to lessen the differences these days, I think, but I don't live there anymore, so it's not really appropriate for me to try and comment authoritatively on how the UK's regional accents are holding up.

 

[Stray Cat]

Haven't seen this one, so THANK you for posting it Wiser Hatter! :yo:

 

[Peter_E]

The last 6 or so generations of my family have been born and have lived in Yorkshire. We don't travel far! I love Yorkshire!

I love Yorkshire, too, although at the moment I live far away.

I was just going through my late father's stuff. He started some ancestry research. Among the things there is a brief history of the Cawood name: My grandmother (dad's mum) was nee Cawood. The first record of the Cawood family name was in 935 AD, and the Manor of Cawood was given to the See of York by King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great. So, I suppose half of my family didn't get too far from home for a millennium or so, too!

 

[esteban68]

The Dales dialect could often differ from dale to dale I am told!....the series 'All Creatures Great and Small" is excellent tv and the characters are pretty true to the books.

I don't know. I don't think I have ever seen the movie. But, this (from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071118/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv) makes me think it probably wasn't very accurate:
"Although born in Sunderland, Herriot spent the first twenty-three years of his life in Glasgow, and never lost the accent, as can be heard in television interviews. Simon Ward however, plays him as a Londoner."

Most TV shows seem to not be very accurate. The have people with Somerset accents in Lancashire, etc. "Downton Abbey" does a pretty good job with their Yorkshire accents, I think, even though Highclere Castle isn't in Yorkshire in real life. But, notice I said: accent. If the show's characters talked with a true dialect, you would probably need subtitles to understand what they said.

As esteban68 says, in 30 miles there can be a discernible difference in the accent. People can tell you're a stranger. TV and so forth is tending to lessen the differences these days, I think, but I don't live there anymore, so it's not really appropriate for me to try and comment authoritatively on how the UK's regional accents are holding up.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just got a chance to watch this last night. Thank you for posting. An incredible view into a moment in time. While not based in West Riding, one can see some of "Call the Midwife," the UK TV series set in 1950s East London, in the video. The clothes, the architecture, the hairstyles and, based on the optimistic voice-over in the West Riding video, even the mindset / attitude-toward-life of the TV show echo the West Riding video.

 

[Shfle]

I was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, and grew up until age 8 on Skipton Rd between the River Aire and the Leeds & Liverpool canal, so a lot of this little movie is very nostalgic for me.

But, I'll tell thee summat for nowt ....

Those mills were nowhere near as idyllic as the movie portrays: They were brutal places. Blake didn't use the phrase "dark satanic mills" for no reason. Whether they were Lancashire cotton mills or Yorkshire woolen mills, for a mill worker, riding their bike to work in the dark, cold rainy winter morning, clocking in for countless hours in the cacophonous bowels, then riding their bike home in the dark, winter rain again, was not a romantic existence; it was miserable drudgery that few can imagine these days.

And that lass playing Jane Eyre was not from Yorkshire, not with that accent.



Not to nit-pick, "Kes" was set in the mining area around Barnsley. The dialect is a bit different. At age 8, we moved to the Sheffield area (Dronfield, actually - you will know it estaban68) and I remember being misunderstood many times when I used the West Riding words. Hard to believe, huh? but true!

Anyway, the West Riding officially no longer exists. After at least a thousand years, the powers that be decreed it out of existence. There is West Yorkshire now, but it isn't the same area (smaller) than the West Riding was.

Barnsley might be in South Yorkshire under the newer boundaries, but historically it was certainly in the West Riding of Yorkshire

 

[Benny Holiday]

I was just going through my late father's stuff. He started some ancestry research. Among the things there is a brief history of the Cawood name: My grandmother (dad's mum) was nee Cawood. The first record of the Cawood family name was in 935 AD, and the Manor of Cawood was given to the See of York by King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great. So, I suppose half of my family didn't get too far from home for a millennium or so, too!

My surname is Pudsey, so you folk will be familiar with that name. The original Pudsey, from what my studies have revealed, would have been a Norman who put a Gallic twist on the Saxon place name Podeschesaie to take the name Pagan de Pudsey (or de Podesay). Anyway, you beat me by a good 150-200 years on the family history front Peter!

My grandfather was Horatio Pudsey and he came to Australia from Halifax in the 1920s. I've been to both Halifax and Pudsey and it was a real experience to see and feel where my blood comes from. My grandmother was from Elland and, while my grandfather's accent was understandable to most Aussies in the 1950s, my Mum lived in fear of every word her mother-in-law said, the accent being totally unintelligible to her!

I'm looking forward to taking my kids to Yorkshire one day. I'm extremely proud of our Northern English heritage.