Talking Location With … Julie Houston: Farnley Tyas (Huddersfield)

5th January 2023

#TalkingLocationWith... Julie Houston: Farnley Tyas – Woodsome Valley – Huddersfield. Author of A Village Affair.

My maternal grandmother was born at Sandhurst military academy into an army family, her parents and ancestors having never previously ventured any further north than Dorset and Surrey. Why then would my great grandfather, Walter Henry Edward Mansfield – himself born at Hampton Court where the 18^th Hussars were stationed before leaving for India – make the decision to move north to the mill town of Huddersfield, famous worldwide not only for its Worsted woollen cloth and Choral Society (and later, the birth place of Prime Minister Harold Wilson) but, also, for its dark satanic mills and smoke-ridden industries?

The answer – and I have the evidence in the form of a beautiful conductor’s baton – is that my granny’s father was a brilliant musician and, once he’d left the army where he’d been a military band leader, must have realised that in order to carry on his musical profession, he’d need to move his family north to where there was a proliferation of traditional brass bands. It must have been something of a cultural shock for the Mansfield family having to leave the rolling green fields of Surrey and Middlesex for the industrial West Riding town, especially when, on arrival, they found themselves living in the built-up town centre itself.

Within a few months, seeking fresh air, greenery and the countryside they’d so unwillingly had to leave behind, the family moved to Farnley Tyas in the Woodsome Valley, south of the town.

Farnley Tyas is mentioned in the Domesday book, Ilbert de Lacey being sent by William the Conqueror to settle the area and keep down the local peasants. Fletcher House, the oldest house in the Woodsome Valley and lived in by local farmer, Ian Stringer, and which I can see from my window as I write, also merits a mention in the book.

 As a little girl, my sister and I were often taken by my granny the five miles or so on the bus, from where we lived at the other side of Huddersfield, back to Farnley Tyas because she loved the area so much. It’s probably only now, having lived here in the Woodsome Valley myself for the last thirty years, I’ve come to realise just what the area meant to my granny and how she loved the village and surrounding countryside. Every summer, we’d get off the bus at the – allegedly – 400-year-old Farnley Cock public house, stop for ice cream at the one village shop and post office and then, after a quick visit to see the tiny village school where Granny had been a pupil, follow the track down into Molly Carr woods for a picnic.

It is debateable whether there was ever a local woman for whom the woods are named, but legend has it that there was, indeed, a wise woman living in the woods making herbal remedies, but was persecuted as a witch. How much of this is true, I don’t know, but certainly, the Mollicarr Wood sing is still, I believe, an annual gathering on Whit Sunday morning at dawn. One year, back in the 1930s, as many as 8000 people allegedly gathered to sing. Whether the sing was originally started for religious reasons, or because nightingales were known to sing at dawn in May in these woods, is unclear.

Living in the Woodsome Valley, with views stretching across to Farnley Tyas, I was amongst locals and environmentalists horrified when plans were put forward by the then owners of the village to build hundreds of houses in this historic place. The fight to keep the Woodsome Valley from development was eventually won several years ago, but I was inspired to write A Village Affair as a direct consequence of this. I came up with an area called Norman’s Meadow which, in reality, is based on one of the meadows stretching down the valley and which, in the book has been taken over by ninety-year-old Granddad Norman and made utterly spectacular by his sowing and cultivating a carpet of wild flowers every spring and summer.

So, this, then, is Farnley Tyas and Woodsome: a beautiful green – and historic – oasis in the middle of a West Yorkshire industrial sprawl. We have the Pennines and Holmfirth (made famous by The Last of the Summer Wine) to the west, the cities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield just a short journey away and this beautiful valley, visited by badgers, foxes, pheasant and deer, right outside my window as I write.

Julie Houston

Catch Julie on Twitter @JulieHouston2 

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