From the near wreck of a moorland farm, therefore, High Whin was changed into a highly attractive home and so the sheep farmers and market traders of the moors found a newcomer among them, a man who might have to be taught the rudiments of moorland sheep husbandry. His name was Julian Beresford, and his wife was called Christine. Both were in the mid-forties and both were keen to establish themselves in their new and challenging life. They had no children, but Christine did have several golden retrievers because that was her hobby — she bred them and showed them and, I was later to learn, she was extremely successful in this specialized field.
Shortly after they moved in I paid a call just to introduce myself and was invited to have a coffee with them. I found Julian to be a powerful man, both in appearance and personality; well over six feet tall he had dark hair and thick eyebrows, broad shoulders and a figure which suggested he kept himself very fit, while Christine, a blonde, was a good-looking, slightly overweight woman with immense charm and a cheerful smile. Clearly, they had ambition and determination and I knew they would be successful — each had that confidence which leads to success. They told me about their plans, what they’d done to the house, what they were going to do with the outbuildings and how they planned to immerse themselves in the life and community of the moors.
It would be a couple of months later when I received a phone call from Julian Beresford asking if I would pop in to see him next time I was passing. He said it was not urgent, there was no need to make a special journey to High Whin.
He did not explain the reason for his call except to say he’d welcome my advice on a little problem, and so a couple of days later I was in the Elsinby area and drove along the bumpy, narrow lane to High Whin. Julian had noticed my approach as he’d been working out of doors and when I eased into the parking area in front of the house he was awaiting me. It was about eleven o’clock and, as before, he invited me in for a coffee. Christine was inside the house, busying herself with decorating the dining-room, but she welcomed the opportunity for a short break.
After the small talk he said, ‘Well, Mr Rhea, you’ll be wondering what all this is about, but I wanted to ask you this — what’s the position if you find yourself in possession of property which might be worth a lot of money, but which isn’t yours and which you did not know about? Could I be charged with a criminal offence if I keep it?’
‘Like finding hidden treasure, you mean?’ I was wondering if he’d found something during the alterations to his buildings.
‘Sort of,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t mean treasure trove. I know how that system works because I once found some Roman coins on my other farm. This is different. We bought this farm as it stood at the time — empty for ten years and in dire need of modernization, but with lots of old furniture littered about the house and loads more junk and old machinery in the outbuildings. We bought it lock, stock and barrel, as they say. The lot, including the junk.’
‘Then I’d say whatever you find here is yours, surely? You haven’t discovered a Rembrandt in the attic, have you?’
‘Something along very similar lines,’ he smiled. ‘When you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you.’
With Christine accompanying us he led me to one of the outbuildings and as we approached it he said, ‘This old shed was full of rusty machinery, a broken mangle, old horse collars, broken lengths of fencing, bits of tree trunks which had been stored for timber but never cut — you name it, Mr Rhea, and it had been stuffed into this shed. That’s how it was when we bought High Whin. Because we did not need to use this shed we left it alone until we had time to clear it out — and we started not long before we rang you.’
‘And you found something?’
‘Right at the back, under all the other clutter,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’
He opened the door and led me into the dark interior; there were no windows and the only light came through the open door, but as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw the outline of what looked like a curious trap — the pony and trap type of vehicle. Painted blue, it was complete with two large red wheels and elegant blue shafts and included a black-roofed cab directly over the axle. There was seating space for two passengers on leather upholstered seats and two brass coach lanterns, one at each side of the cab, near the glass windows.
‘A trap?’ I smiled. ‘You’ll be able to take people for rides at our fairs and garden parties! All you need is a pony.’
‘It’s in surprisingly good condition,’ he said. ‘A clean up and a bit of carpentry should make it roadworthy, maybe with a spot of paint where it’s been knocked.’
‘So, what’s the problem?’ I put to him. ‘If you bought the farm lock, stock and barrel, that surely implies that whatever is on the premises becomes your property.’
‘That’s what my solicitor said, I had a word with him before I rang you.’
‘Then I can’t see there’s any problem,’ I had to say. ‘Certainly, there’s no need to worry about criminal proceedings; you’ve not stolen this trap if that’s what’s bothering you. If it’s been here, abandoned for all those years, it’s a case of finders-keepers. Both civil law and criminal law would support that.’
‘It is bothering me just a little,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why I wanted this chat. You see, Mr Rhea, this is no ordinary trap. It’s a cab, a Hansom Cab to be precise, designed by Joseph Aloysius Hansom.’
‘He was born in York,’ I said. ‘An architect by profession.’
‘That’s the fellow, Mr Rhea. Christine’s done a spot of speedy research into his life and work.’
Christine now said her piece. ‘We found a letter, you see, Mr Rhea, tucked into a pocket in the cab’s leatherwork. It’s still there, we put it back where it was found because we think it should never be parted from this cab.’
‘And?’ I invited her to continue.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I did a bit of checking at the reference library in York and in view of what’s in that letter I think this is a prototype of Hansom’s first cab. If it is then it is very rare and highly collectable, unique in fact, and therefore far more valuable than any other of his cabs which might still exist.’
‘So, what’s in the letter?’ I asked.
She went across to the recumbent cab, opened a door and pulled a tatty piece of folded yellowing paper from a pocket in the interior wall. She passed it to me. I opened it to find it was plain paper bearing the date 12th August 1834, and dark-ink handwriting addressed to ‘Dear George’. It said: This is the vehicle I envisage, large wheels beneath the centre of the cab’s body to give stability with the driver at the front up aloft, louvre ventilators, a small covered cab for two persons and drawn by a single horse — and a good-looking vehicle too! Sincerely, J.A. Hansom.
‘This is wonderful stuff,’ I enthused. ‘But if this is Hansom’s very own prototype, how does it come to be hidden on this farm?’ I handed the letter back to Christine.
‘From 1820 until 1855 the farm was owned by a close friend of Hansom’s, George Swainton,’ Christine had clearly delved into the mystery in the short time available. ‘I think he came here to build his prototype away from prying eyes, so no one would copy it. Hansom was a devout Catholic, too, and he spent a lot of time at Maddleskirk Abbey — which is how I know about his link with this farm. Their librarian was very helpful. Hansom and his friend would walk across the hills to the abbey, to attend Mass. I’m sure this is the George mentioned in this letter.’
‘It all makes sense,’ I said. ‘So, who have you told about this, apart from your solicitor and me?’
‘No one,’ Julian said. ‘We thought that once the history of this cab became known, there’d be all kinds of people coming here to claim it, and so I wanted to be as sure as possible about my, rights, just in case!’
‘Look at it this way,’ I suggested. ‘If that cab was built on this farm in 1834 or thereabouts, it’s been here for more than a hundred and thirty years. How many changes of ownership has the farm witn
essed in that time, I wonder?’
‘Eight,’ said Christine without hesitation. ‘I’ve checked.’
‘And that cab has been owned by them all, without any kind of claim being made — and now it’s your turn. But you’ve discovered something about it that no one else knew — or perhaps no one else cared about. I cannot see that anyone else can have any claim to this, certainly not retrospectively in view of its unique character and bearing in mind the terms of purchase of the farm. And, of course, you have done all within your power to trace the owner — and the true owner would seem to be no less a person than Joseph Aloysius Hansom himself. It seems he left it there in 1834 and he’s not going to make a fuss about it.’
I advised Julian and Christine to make a written record of their discovery and the research they had undertaken, and then to lodge it either with their bank manager in a safe deposit box or with the deeds of the house, just in case there was any future counterclaim. In time, though, there was no claim and they donated the splendid cab to the Northern Museum of Horse Drawn Vehicles by which time its pedigree had been verified by experts. It was Hansom’s very first attempt to build his famous cab, although his original design was later amended by a man called John Chapman who patented his own design in 1836. But those little cabs have always been known as Hansom Cabs. And Julian and Christine did become highly successful moorland sheep farmers.
Chapter 8
‘If there’s one thing I shall not miss in my retirement,’ Sergeant Blaketon said one day when he was in an affable mood, ‘it is that army of self-righteous people who persistently complain about things. Look at this lot!’
It was the Ashfordly Police Station file entitled ‘Persistent Complainers’ and every year it was filled with letters and abstracts of telephone calls or a log of such callers at the police station. They complained about anything under the sun which annoyed them, but the most regular grumblers were about litter in the street or in people’s gardens, noise, especially that which emanated from dance halls, pubs and neighbours’ music centres, traffic, especially that which parked outside their house or aroused them during the night, neighbours who were a nuisance, policemen not doing their duty, teachers not disciplining children out of school, indiscriminate parking of prams and pushchairs outside shops, window boxes that dripped water on their heads, visiting cats digging up gardens for latrines, shop awnings that were too low, footpaths with gaps in the paving stones, the language used by some radio and television presenters and the proliferation of road signs.
Quite often, there was little or nothing the police could do about the complaint, often because it was a civil matter between two warring factions and not a matter in which the police service should involve itself. This was self-defeating, however, because the persistent complainer simply returned to repeat the complaint, this time adding another to the effect that the police were doing nothing about it. And this file related specifically to those who do persistently complain.
The occasional complaint was sometimes justified, in which case the police would attend to the matter in whatever manner was appropriate, but persistent complainers were never satisfied. They just kept on complaining and used tactics like writing to the newspapers, their MP, the prime minister, the queen, the pope, the chief rabbi, the Home Office, the Foreign Office or anyone else in authority who might look kindly upon their grumbles. Sometimes, their letter would be sent back to the local police station for a constable to investigate the matter, provided it was justified of course, and so the whole merry time-wasting exercise started all over again.
The main problem with these people is that they never give up. They are persistent complainers who repeatedly grumble about anything that annoys them, but genuinely feel they are doing something beneficial for society, whereas in reality they are nothing but a nuisance themselves. Some of them bear a grudge of some kind or suffer from a defect in their personality; I felt sure others suffered nothing more than crushing loneliness so that complaining was a means of attracting attention and perhaps getting a visitor, even if it was a police officer. But so many of them were very bitter towards their fellows. For some reason, they saw themselves as arbiters of public morals and behaviour while themselves being anything but perfect — as Christ himself said, when he was shown the woman who was an adulteress. In his time, the penalty for adultery was being stoned to death, but when Christ looked upon the woman he said to the militant crowd, ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ No one took up the challenge. Persistent complainers should be issued with that story on a little piece of paper! But it wouldn’t stop them. They’d complain about the size of the print, the colour of the paper, Christ’s abdication of responsibility, or something. In listening to these non-stop complaints the police had to be patient and polite, otherwise a complaint would be lodged against the officer involved, and most of the time we did our best to examine the matter and, if necessary, took the appropriate action. From time to time, though, we wished the ground would open up and swallow some of these pests, or that some of them would be hoist by their own petard.
Happily, I did see Sergeant Blaketon deal effectively with one of Ashfordly’s more persistent complainers. He was the appropriately named Harold Nutter who lived in a semi-detached house at 47 Brantsford Road in Ashfordly. He was a small, slightly-built man with half-moon spectacles, a pinched face, a thin mouth and a massive bald pate above a patch of dark hair. He tried to disguise his baldness by spreading long strands of thin hair across the expanse of skin, but that only served to emphasize his hairless state. Harold was a retired civil servant who had come to Yorkshire because he’d read about the peace and tranquillity offered by its rural areas and it seemed he had persuaded his mouse-like wife, Lydia, to accompany him.
In his retirement, though, Harold had become quite famous, or perhaps notorious, because he was a regular letter writer to the newspapers, but his letters were always connected in some way with the roads or the traffic they carried. In the newspapers he complained about a lack of attention to the roads in winter, blocked drains, ineffective snow clearance, too long a gap between a fall of snow and the arrival of the ploughs or not enough gravel or grit on the ice.
In the summer he complained about traffic congestion, indiscriminate parking by tourists, noisy motor bikes, councils repairing road surfaces in hot weather, cyclists weaving about, children pulling faces through car windows, caravans, slow-moving farm vehicles, harvesters, cattle trucks going to agricultural shows, horse boxes and pig containers. If he was not writing about this kind of thing he found something else to amuse him, such as grumbles about children kicking footballs into his garden, putting chewing gum on park benches, leaving litter in the bus shelter or using bad language.
However, a wonderful new development occurred which provided him with even more opportunities to complain to the newspapers and the police. The authorities decided to impose a 30 mph speed limit on Brantsford Road, and it was effective on the stretch which ran right past his house. Harold believed he was responsible for that limit being imposed because, over the past five years or so, he had campaigned for a speed limit in countless letters to the papers, to his MP, to the county council and rural district council and of course, to the police. His dream had come true; his efforts had been worthwhile, and Harold now had a speed limit right outside his front door. The snag was that no one took the slightest bit of notice. Traffic moved along Brantsford Road just as it had done prior to the imposition of the restriction.
I was on duty in Ashfordly Police Station one morning when Harold arrived at the counter.
‘Constable,’ he said in his slightly high-pitched voice, ‘you really must do something about traffic along Brantsford Road. I thought the new restrictions would have reduced their speed, but not so! They hurtle past my house just as they used to, lorries, buses, cars, motor bikes, all ignoring the signs.’
‘We need to catch the speeders before we can prosecute them,’ I said. ‘We have to prove they are ex
ceeding the limit; we can’t prosecute them if we merely think they are going too fast. We need evidence good enough for the courts to impose a conviction. I do know that our traffic patrols regularly monitor speed limits throughout the county and pay special attention to newly imposed speed limit areas. We have the situation in mind and I am sure our Road Traffic division will be staging a speed trap there before too long.’
‘You need a uniformed presence all the time on that road, Constable, to deter them, to remind them of their responsibilities. I shall write to the chief constable to suggest a constable be permanently placed on duty there, to deter speeders.’
‘We do have other things to deal with, Mr Nutter, like crime and attacks upon old people, children and so on. We cannot spare an officer full-time for that kind of duty.’
‘That is no excuse, Constable. I pay my rates so that I can get a good service from the police. What are the police for, if they are not going to enforce the law? I shall write to my Member of Parliament, and to the Home Office, and I shall inform them that Ashfordly Police are not taking their duties seriously enough!’ And with that, he walked out.
I told Sergeant Blaketon of our exchange of words and he advised me to make an entry in our occurrence book detailing my comments and outlining Mr Nutter’s grounds for complaint. ‘And,’ he added, ‘give Road Traffic a ring to find out when their next speed trap will be located on Brantsford Road.’
CONSTABLE AROUND THE HOUSES a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors Page 17
