Golden wedding
My wife Darral and I recently celebrated our golden wedding anniversary with family and friends at Pateley Bridge in North Yorkshire. We stayed at the magnificent Grassfield Hall on which construction began in 1801. The hall was built by Teasdale Hilton Hutchinson (1768-1845) who leased and managed the local lead mines in the area. On 16th July 1799 he married Elizabeth Hanley (1776-1837) at Kirkby Malzeard and they moved into the hall in 1810. Elizabeth predeceased him but he continued to live there until his death in 1845.1 In recent years the hall became derelict but it has now been beautifully restored and can be hired for special occasions, which, unbeknown to me, is exactly what my wife did. I had no idea when we arrived that the entire hall was at our disposal for three days of celebration; the venue had been kept totally secret for several months. When we set off from home in East Yorkshire, I did not know where we were going or who was going to arrive for the celebration. I was not disappointed, neither were the guests. It was a masterpiece of event management that will be forever remembered by all who attended. The main event was held in the Hanley Room. That was a remarkable coincidence, as we were both born in Hanley, in the heart of the north Staffordshire Potteries – albeit not quite such a picturesque and tranquil location!
Nidd Valley
Another surprise was to find that the hall overlooked Nidderdale where the Nidd Valley Light Railway (NVLR) once ran. It is a railway that I had not studied in any detail but that had also been taken care of. As an anniversary present, my wife had sourced a copy of The Nidd Valley Light Railway by D. J. Croft, published by Oakwood Press in 1972, the year of our marriage. She had also obtained the second revised and enlarged edition, published in 1987, which was the year when we moved from Norfolk to East Yorkshire. A visit to the excellent Nidderdale Museum at Pateley Bridge produced further information with a grand display of photographs and relics and the purchase of a booklet entitled Railways in Nidderdale written by Philip Atkins, former Librarian at the National Railway Museum in York. Thanks to my wife, my appetite for the NVLR had certainly been whetted. It has subsequently been further enhanced after sourcing a copy of Lesser Railways of the Yorkshire Dales, published by Plateway Press in 1991 and written by Harold D. Bowtell ‘Bowtell of the Reservoirs.’2
A project
Being an avid researcher of railways and other forms of transport, my wife was hoping that our anniversary would spark another project about a railway that previously I knew very little about. Indeed it has, for this most unusual railway and summarise its history.
