Robert Hird (1768—1841) was a Bedale shoemaker who spent decades composing an epic account of the town and its inhabitants in the form of 3,000 four-line verses together with copious explanatory notes. Transcribed and published by North Yorkshire County Records Office in 1975, Hird’s Annals of Bedale is a hefty 600-page volume.
Despite the generally terrible poetry, Hird’s Annals offer a colourful picture of the Georgian town and its surrounding countryside, with interesting snippets about local wildlife and the fast-changing landscape. Many of the Commons which were such a feature of the medieval and early modern Yorkshire were enclosed during Hird’s lifetime and almost all of the wetland Carrs drained; the Annals provide some of the few first-hand descriptions we have of these places. For example, Hird recalled childhood visits to Aiskew Moor thus:
“Oft here I rambled as a boy,
And my schoolfellows too,
In search of nests, was our employ,
Went whins and rushes through!
“Plovers and linnits, Chatts and Snipes,
All were alike ‘tis true!
We often were as wet as tripes,
In stocking and in shoe!!”
As a boy, he helped gather whins (gorse) from Aiskew Moor and No Man’s Moor (a common shared by several villages west of Crakehall): gorse was valuable for firing ovens and there were often strict rules as to how much could be cut from common land. He also described how townsfolk had fled to one of the local moors during the Jacobite revolt of 1745, “where they hid themselves amongst the reeds, sedges and rushes” – presumably a recollection passed down to him. Aiskew Moor was grazed by Galloways (an indigenous breed of hill pony favoured by local coal merchants) and cottagers’ geese.
As a boy, Robert’s brother William would hunt duck, Hedgehogs and Foulmarts (Polecats) on the local Carrs and Ings. Once a common mammal of Yorkshire wetlands, Polecats were probably extinct in the county by the early 20th century but have made a gradual comeback in recent years, including sightings at Nosterfield Nature Reserve.
The poorly-drained commons and seasonally-flooded carrs were seen as an impediment to agricultural efficiency by ‘improving’ land owners, and also a source of ill-health. At that time, malaria was still endemic in parts of England and Hird’s school master was an “ague doctor who cured that malady by Charm” (a form of folk medicine relying on written or spoken invocations). The illness, he believed, “was brought on through the great quantity of stagnant water on the marshy lands and numerous carrs, which now are all drained”. In fact, it’s unlikely that the North Yorkshire carrs supported the principal malaria-carrying mosquito Anopheles atroparvus, an insect of brackish coastal levels, and the mild ‘ague’ Hird described was probably a general term covering a range of fevers.
Many of the birds, mammals and wildflowers with which Hird was familiar remained commonplace into the 20th century, though some have since declined and a few disappeared from the local countryside. He recalled bats emerging from the eaves of cottages, Lapwings nesting in the fields, Barn Owls inhabiting the towers of Snape Castle and Curlews calling on the way to Well. Goldfinches and Bullfinches were trapped using call-birds by a man in Exelby, presumably for sale as cage birds. As well as raiding birds’ nests, Robert and his childhood friends hunted for squirrel dreys at Thorpe Perrow: these would have been Red Squirrels, as their North American grey cousins had yet to be introduced to this country.
In spring, they would gather Primroses and Cowslips and later ‘brandy bottles’ (Yellow Water-lily flowers). In wet meadows near Kirkbridge, he recalled,
“We stept carefully o’er the ground,
Or wet shod, oft had been!
We here the pretty flower found,
We called the bird e’en”
This was Bird’s-eye Primrose Primula farinosa, a Yorkshire speciality once found in suitable habitat across the Swale & Ure valleys but now lost from the lowlands.
PHOTO: Bird’s-eye Primrose (photo from the LUCT nursery by Laurie Reed)
In Snape,
“The houses mostly bad and old,
Were meanly thatch’d and low!
And house leek grew, both strong and bold!
Vast stonecrop too we saw!”
The Houseleek Sempervivum tectorum was a common plant of thatched roofs, once believed to afford protection from fire, and would have grown with various Sedum species: we know botanical records that White Stonecrop Sedum album and Thick-leaved Stonecrop Sedum dasyphyllum grew on walls in Bedale and Tanfield around this time.
Hird mentioned Elder hedges several times, apparently referring to deliberate plantings of the bush. These would not have been stock-proof but he lists the uses of Elder as including skin cleanser and wine (from the flowers); cough syrup (from the berries); skewers and pegs (from the wood); the leaves were used for polishing oak furniture.
Although sanitation improved in the early 19th century, water running through the streets of Bedale was polluted by effluent from dung heaps, local industries and the public ‘necessaries’. It’s perhaps surprising, then, that Bedale Beck continued to support a rich assemblage of fish and other aquatic life. In the early 1820s, Hird listed Eel, Pike, Chub, Roach, Gudgeon, Minnow, Bullhead, Burbot and Brown Trout. There were also Crayfish and “Horse muscles” (Duck or Swan Mussels). The Burbot, a freshwater member of the Cod family, was once widespread in the Humber river basin but became extinct in Britain during the 1970s, probably due to a combination of factors including pesticide pollution and river engineering. The native White-clawed Crayfish has been replaced in Bedale Beck (and many other watercourses) by the invasive Signal Crayfish.
Despite his enthusiasm for hunting and egg-collecting, Hird abhorred cruelty to animals: he recorded his disdain for bull-baiting and bird-liming (catching birds by applying a sticky paste to perches), and clearly had mixed feelings about the fate of one rare visitor to the town:
“For here a shot, a deadly one,
Was made at Bedale wood!
The stranger had from Egypt come!
And was in search of food.
When Thackwray saw it on the ground,
And shott with deadly aim!
Most beautiful the bird he found,
He had to learn its name.
He got it cur’d, and in a case,
It remains there as rare!
Perhaps the like in any’s days,
Will never more fly there!
Its beauty I cannot describe!
Perhaps you may it see,
Its crest is like the peacock tribe,
Its name is the Hoopoe”.
Hoopoe (not in Bedale!)