One of the members of the History Group has been researching her Farnhill ancestors and has drawn our attention to an article in the Dalesman magazine (Vol. 12, October 1950, p264) written by one of her relatives, Edward Driver, about his grandfather, Ned Green of High Farnhill. The following paragraphs have been taken from that piece.
My grandfather [Ned] loved company, and after long days in the fields he would stroll to a bench which stood beneath a sycamore at the top end of the village, and there in the cool of the summer evening he and his cronies would swop yarns until one of them remarked that "if they didn't mak' a move" it would be milking time again before they got to bed.
[This must have been the bench at the corner of Main Street, in High Farnhill, and Bradley Lane. Both the bench and the sycamore are now long gone, but the photograph below - from our archive - shows that it must have been a pleasant place to pass a few hours chating with friends.]
His laugh began before the teller's tale was ended, with an expression of amused incredulity, and when the climax was reached his head was thrown back, there was an explosion of laughter, and the whole mountain of the man shook to its very base.
You will glean from the last sentence that my grandfather was a big man, and you will be right. I have been told that he and my father are the two biggest men to be buried in Kildwick churchyard. How true that is I do not know, but this I do remember - that when he was taken on his last journey along the winding village street, the hugh coffin projected beyond the body of the hearse, and the glass door which should have been closed on the coffin had to be left ajar.
With thanks to Margaret Yao and Dalesman magazine
Posted: 29/10/2016