A Village Childhood
3 October 2007
A Personal Recollection of Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge
Gertrude M. Attwood
Published by Gertrude M. Attwood in association with Milltown Memories. £12
Gertrude Attwood’s beautifully written and meticulously detailed book tells of her childhood, long-ago, when small town and village communities such as those of Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge provided a safe and nurturing environment in which children could grow and flourish.
As Gertrude, nee Ogden, succinctly puts it, “Nothing like that homely, self-contained, inquisitive and friendly society exists today, and probably never will again,” However, the author’s recollections are not viewed through rose-coloured spectacles; the hardships and tragedies endured by her own family, friends and neighbours are described unflinchingly, often in the most moving terms.
“Life was often far from ideal,” admits Gertrude, and she and her beloved sister, Alice, “often rebelled”; but Mytholmroyd – a small industrialised village in the West Riding of Yorkshire where her father held an important position as manager of a local mill – also the birth-place, coincidentally, of Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, ‘was a good teacher.’
Above all she was able to enjoy “some of the most beautiful scenery in the world,” as the author enthuses; a perfect playground for the children of the upper Calder Valley in those pre-war years when youngsters could run free and explore to their hearts’ content.
From chapter one, in which Gertrude’s prodigious memory for facts, people and places, is used to great effect to set the scene in the 1920s and 30s, to the closing chapters in which, in 1942 aged 19, the author bids a sad farewell to the valley to study at King’s College, London (at that time evacuated to Bristol), Gertrude unerringly guides the reader through a truly golden childhood.
Those with memories long enough will find great pleasure in recalling a past that Gertrude warmly evokes in loving detail, while those of a lesser longevity will welcome the opportunity to share in her engrossing, often deeply moving memories that are nevertheless spiced with a good helping of Yorkshire humour and grit.
The book is well illustrated with pictures from Gertrude’s own, from friends and from the Longstaff collections.
Issy Shannon
