Hanneke has kindly allowed us to re-produce the text of the talk that she prepared for our recent AGM.

On the weekend of 20 July 2024, the Society is supporting a celebration “The Legacy of Dr. Arthur Raistrick” to be held in Grassington Town Hall, organised by the Yorkshire Geological Society. Click here for more details.

Post created by Keith P

Arthur Raistrick was born in a working-class home in Saltaire in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 16th August 1896, and after elementary school in Shipley, he won a scholarship for Bradford Grammar School. After school, Arthur was apprenticed at Shipley Electrical Works and he also attended evening classes.

Mr. Raistrick became known as a British geologist, engineer, industrial archaeologist, historian, field researcher and excavator, author, socialist, photographer, rambler, lecturer, pacifist and less well known is that he loved music and learnt to play the organ as a young boy. Later in his life he became interested in the antiquities of China and even had a go learning Mandarin.

Arthur was offered an OBE by Harold Wilson, but refused as he was against any form of privilege. His Mother, Minnie, together with other relatives worked at the famous Salt’s Textile Mill in the model industrial village of Saltaire. The Mill is still standing and visited by many tourists and local people. It has two restaurants and a fantastic book shop as well as a designer outlet and residential facilities too.

Arthur’s father, George, was an engineer and a prominent member of the Independent Labour Party all his life. George engendered Arthur’s life- with socialism and a life-long love of the Dales, by taking him on long walks, often staying overnight in barns or at relatives.

He was imprisoned as a Conscientious Objector during the First World War and said about his Imprisonment and I quote: “It was hard, but you learned to adjust.” After his spell in prison, he joined the Society of Friends (The Quakers) and sometime later, Arthur was invited to take up a fellowship at the Quaker College of Woodbridge, Selly Oak, and met members of the Darby and Cadbury families there. This led to studies of other Quaker industrialists and resulted in several books about the Iron Founders, the Darby’s and about Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. (Colin Ginger’s article for the Yorkshire Dales Society: Ironbridge — The Arthur Raistrick Contribution).

After his release from prison, he studied civil engineering at Leeds University, but despite his qualification, it was difficult for him to get a full-time job. As Arthur said: “I was unemployable under that curious regulation against Conscientious Objectors”.

He coped by securing occasional research grants and undertaking short-time mining contracts on pit safety. In the evenings, he taught adult education classes for the Workers’ Educational Association, at Bradford University and Leeds University’s extra mural department for over 50 years. One of our Honorary Life members, Mrs. Freda Helm and a couple of other local people attended these classes. Arthur also had a distinguished career at King’s College, Newcastle, where he was invited to set up a department of mining engineering, retiring as Reader. He was later to receive Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Leeds and Bradford.

None of this academic work, reduced his political activity. During the depression of the early 1930’s, Arthur toured the stricken South Wales coalfields, speaking at miners’ welfare clubs and visiting camps of the unemployed.

Once again, war was to impact on his life. As one of the founders of the Pacifist Advisory Bureau for the North, he refused to engage in military research for the university. As a result, he was suspended without pay for the duration of the war.

To survive, Arthur and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to a smallholding ‘Home Croft’ in Linton in Wharfedale where they grew much of their own food and left any surplus on needy neighbours’ doorsteps. Although the food was gladly taken, some neighbours never spoke to him because of his pacifism, even decades later.

After the war, Raistrick was reinstated to his lecturing post. He was credited with founding Industrial Archaeology as an academic discipline. Later, he became President of the Ramblers Association and with some friends, he began to excavate the now famous industrial heritage site at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Members of the Field Society visited the museum on the visit I organised to Ironbridge a number of years ago. As Arthur would not bow before the royal visitors, who came to open the museum, he was not invited to the opening.

Raistrick also played a part in developing Beamish Industrial Open-air museum near Chester-Le-Street.

Arthur was not only a founder Member of the Upper Wharfedale Field Society of which he as President for 15 years, he also was a founder Member of the Yorkshire Dales Society. They declared him “The Dalesman of the Millennium” and installed a gritstone bench in the picnic area of the National Park’s car park in Grassington to commemorate his Life. Recently, Colin Speakman, Friends of the Dales, formerly The Yorkshire Dales Society, who was a founder member of the Grassington Festival, informed me that at the first Grassington Festival, Arthur gave the inaugural lecture. Colin has the first programme and poster of the first Festival. Colin was a friend of Arthur, and like him does not drive.

Arthur also was President of the Craven Pothole Club and involved in the Holiday Fellowship.

The Field Society remembers their founder with a bi-annual lecture, often related to archaeology, or geology. The late Jean Reinsch and late Les Bloom and one of our present Honorary Life members, Freda Helm, remember going to Arthur’s evening classes and on his excursions. The first meeting that became the Upper Wharfedale Field Society took place in the Ambulance Hall in Grassington on 21st May 1949 when 19 people attended.

Arthur Raistrick wrote the “Preface to the bulletin 1949 — 1979: looking back over 30 years and I quote:

“The life of the Upper Wharfedale Field Society has been passed entirely in the post war years 1949 to the present 1979, and this has been an important contributary factor influencing any attempt to assess its character and achievement.

The nineteenth century was the period which saw particularly in the second half, the proliferation of Naturalistic and Scientific Societies all over the country but nowhere in greater numbers than in the Industrial North.

Many of these societies were the product and the extension of interests created in the Mechanics Institutes which in the early years of the century had opened to the working classes, and that part, in particular, was spoken of as the ‘artisans’, the means to increase their very meagre share of education.

This was especially so in the knowledge of the new technologies and in the study of the earth and in the biological sciences soon to be stimulated by the works of Darwin, Wallace, Huxley and their followers. Natural History and Science became the attainable sphere of the amateur as out-door study, observation, and recording served at one and the same time for the extension of knowledge and a health-giving hobby.

The work of local societies in the first half of the twentieth century became more exacting and at the same time much broader based. Amateurs contributed more and more to the work of scientific societies and many important contributions to knowledge were made by people working with small local societies. Easier transport and more distant travel brought new interests and an element of leisure enjoyment into lectures and excursions.

In the thirty years of this Society its meetings have been influenced by the new emphasis on leisure activities and by the broader education now available to all.

We could rightly be classed now among the leisure activities which have retained a strong flavour of science and educational activity, and we must, preserve and encourage something of the older tradition. We must still train younger members as careful and skilled observers and recorders if we are to merit our title of a Naturalist Society. Our task is to combine the best of this scientific tradition with the demands of a more and more leisured membership. This is a job for the younger members; we older ones are too steeped in the tradition of leisure hours all too short for what we wanted to see the record, and difficulties of travel which tied us to a fairly confined and small local area.

As excursions are now easily extended with the help of buses and cars, and as more and more members are traveling abroad and bring back more and more records of their travels, we must not forget that the most valuable assets of a good naturalist are a pair of strong, and well used walking boots and an intimate and reliable knowledge of his own district, plus good local maps.

No society could have a finer location than Craven and the Yorkshire Dales for every kind of interest it may wish to pursue and I have every confidence that the Field Society will continue to make its humble but important contribution to the expansion of our knowledge of these areas. These are rapidly changing times but I think the Society can keep pace with them without losing its essential character as a working Naturalist Society.”

A full set of the Bulletins is available in The Field Society’s precious library and well-worth perusing.

Dr Arthur Raistrick died on the 9th April 1991, survived by his daughter and grandson. His beloved home: Home Croft Linton went on the market for £185,000.

Many tributes were made amongst which were: The Craven Herald 12 April 1991, and the Yorkshire Post 11 April 1991. His obituary also appeared in the Guardian on the 18th of April 1991.

One of these was: “It was the closing of a vast encyclopedia, which could never be reopened. Through the legacy of his writings we can take at least a glimpse into parts of that encyclopic mind and unique personality.”

On behalf of the Upper Wharfedale Field Society, a tribute was paid to Dr Arthur Raistrick by the late Les Bloom at their AGM on Monday the 22nd of April 1991, and I quote:

“When Arthur passed away,” he said, “we lost the very keystone of those 19 people who gathered in Grassington, in May 1949 and eventually formed this UWFS. Arthur was one of those 19 people, and it was his infectious intellect which was so often the catalyst required to spark off such societies as this one. He had this infectious intellect which endeared him to so many of us, and if he recognised a group of people with like fertile minds, he would sow the seeds of a project — such as this Society — and help to guide it through its early years.”

“He was not our first President, but he accepted the office in 1952 and was President for 15 years.”

Mr. Bloom went on to say “Arthur was a legend in his own lifetime — known in all high academic circles and in all fields of Natural History, for his endless number of books, papers and lectures in so many parts of the country, but his speciality was always the North of England and the Dales he loved and knew and walked so much —this Society is proud to have had his leadership”.

The aims and the purpose of a Field Society, as Dr Raistrick saw them were quoted, and then some examples of his sense of humour “behind that otherwise quiet countenance.” “We all know a lot of very clever people, but to know Arthur was to know a true scholar— it was his ability and his dedication which lifted him above all others, and we shall remember him best for this immense scholarship and for speaking the truth quietly.”

If a permanent tribute is to be considered, Mr. Bloom asked the Society to remember the one erected in Dent to Adam Sedgwick — another eminent Dales scholar. “Perhaps a similar kind of simple token of deep respect could be considered — a block of perhaps Silurian slate from the Dales with a simple engraving, as a long-lasting reminder of him.” May be this Society ” on his home ground” should initiate such an idea.

In closing, Mr. Bloom read two verses from the pen of another Yorkshireman:

“Dales in Paradise”

There must be Dales in paradise
Where Wharfe and Aire and Swale,
Fulfil their several destinies
And tell their various tale,
Flinging themselves just when they choose
Into the honest arms of the Ouse

There must be Dales in paradise
Else what will Dalesmen do
Throughout the long eternities,
And none to wander through
Where to walk and laugh and laike,
Before the rest of heavens awake.

“that surely is the paradise where Arthur Raistrick is now resting”.

In October last year I spoke with a couple of local people who had attended the W.E. classes for 3 years. They informed me that Arthur was instrumental with his friend, Mr. Arthur Waters, in walking the Grassington boundary which has become a regular event. It was however, Arthur’s wife, Elizabeth’s idea. It was not really a new idea, as the first bound was walked in the 1700’s.

Recent connections with Raistrick: Mr. Bernard Peel gave a lecture on ‘The Raistricks’ and other hills over 1000 feet in the Yorkshire Dales. He named these 242 hills in honour of ‘the wonderful Dalesman, Arthur Raistrick.’

The UWFS Geology Group visited the Raistrick collection of Rocks and Fossils in the Craven Museum on 31st January 2024 and discovered that Arthur dated the rocks and fossils by the spores and plants he found in these ancient specimens. For Report click here

This year’s Raistrick lecture by Meg Brierley was “Thornton Force,” understanding of the formation of Ingleton Waterfalls.

A date for your diary:

The Yorkshire Geology Society are organising a two-day event on the 20th and 21st of July 2024 at the Townhall Grassington: ‘The Legacy of Dr. Arthur Raistrick’, offering several lectures relating to the different activities Arthur Raistrick was connected with on the Saturday and excursions on the Sunday.

Keith Parker has offered to do a walk covering the lead mining areas of Yarnbury and Grassington, illuminating Raistrick’s work by looking at the remaining industrial landscape and by looking at the Mines Water Management and Social History, illuminating Raistrick’s books with the actual laces on the ground.

Phyllida has offered a walk to share her knowledge of the village and its history.