Life in the Northern Dales Stories from a Farming Family

The life of a farming family in Weardale is described through the recollections of Francis Joseph Sanderson (1904-1993). He had a particularly eventful life, and his reminiscences about lives and times long departed are at the heart of the book. Many of his stories, together with stories I have extracted from Victorian newspapers, are laden with tragedy, with only a few "good news stories". Thus, alongside the idyllic story about summer picnics at the Meeting of the Grains at Ayhope Shield during the Great War, there are numerous accounts of tragic deaths from disease, clothes catching fire, accidental gun-shot wounds, drowning, suicide and murder. He made frequent reference to childhood friends, cousins, uncles and aunts, farmers and village characters, in the process providing me with ample material to organize, contextualize and supplement for this book. The result is a mixture of family and local history which should appeal not only to family historians but also to anyone interested in the history of the Durham Dales, and most particularly the history of Weardale, Hamsterley and South Bedburn.