2010 Lord Lieutenant's Tour of Calderdale
27/04/10
In April CEO Steve Duncan , Chairman Leigh-Anne Stradeski and their wonderful team introduced us to another group of business supporters and beneficiaries of the Foundation and showed yet more of the remarkable initiatives flourishing in Calderdale. These re-enforced something I have known for several years: that in this beautiful valley, where life is as tough as in any other rural community, resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, personal responsibility, generosity, invention and laughter are hallmarks stamped on the local character.
The day began at BCA Leisure in Elland, makers of cable-harnesses for caravans and campers. While many English manufacturers struggle with the recession, this niche business forges ahead, with a 70% market share and every chance of further expansion. BCA won the Manufacturer of the Year Award from the Evening Courier in 2008.
We then visited SUMA, the UK's leading independent wholesaler of high-quality vegetarian, ethical, organic products. It is a workers' co-operative with over 100 employees, supplying customers all over the world but also giving back to the local community, by sourcing products locally and taking part in environmental schemes such as tree-planting, eco-tricity and river clean-ups.
The Midgley Community Shop and Community Room is a prime example of villagers working together for the common good. Midgley once had 11 pubs and a church but these have all gone and there was a danger that the hamlet would lack a meeting place. This has been addressed, not only with a high-quality village shop (financed via dogged work on grant applications) but also with a large room next-door where the full gamut of village activities, from gardening groups, arts and crafts for kids, Burns suppers, and a Grumpy Old Men's Club for serious discussion of the World's degeneration can take place in comfort, with coffee and tea on tap. The villagers care too about eco-systems: hay-meadows are being set aside so that a very rare bird, the twite, who looks like a sparrow but has a pink flash below the wings, may be encouraged back into the area.
We visited Inside Out Kids, where pre-school-age children from 60 or more families enjoy the simple out-door delights some of us knew as children. Fenner, who is six and knows his mind, showed me round, told me to lie on a muddy wooden bridge if I was keen to see tadpoles, and cautioned against going inside the ring of log-seats round the camp-fire, but then he remembered he had not had his lunch and so left me to talk to a young mother with three small children, for whom this is the weekly opportunity to chat with other mothers.
I have visited a few cemeteries in my time (mainly for the sculpture) but have never seen anything quite like Cross Stone Cemetery. The densely-packed grave-stones, with their uniform pointed heads above long rectangular inscription tablets, look like a Roman army processing in tight battle formation down the steep hillside. Six months ago they were entirely submerged under rhododendrons and brambles. Today the undergrowth has nearly all been cleared thanks to a donation and the tireless voluntary help of members of the Lloyds Banking Group and Pit Stop 2000 volunteers.
We were ready for lunch and enchanted with The Old Hall at Todmorden where Nick and Madeleine Hall welcomed us with delicious local-made drinks and we feasted on dock pudding (Kenneth Chew-Tetlaw had collected the docks over the previous weekend), excellent local cheeses and Just Jenny's fabulous ice-cream.
The afternoon was spent in Todmorden, as inventive and original a community as you can find anywhere. We saw a house near the railway station whose electrical needs are fuelled by solar power, inspected vegetable and herb plots in every conceivable space from the station itself to the health centre car park and the police station (the work of Incredible Edible, who are taking a global lead in encouraging the planting of vegetables, which anyone may pick and use. Vandals destroy flower-beds but not vegetable-plots).
Finally there was a Morton Gledhill supported fashion-show at the Hippodrome by local fashion retailer Makepiece who keep a flock of sheep, spin their fleeces into wool and make cobweb-fine garments so outrageous and enchanting that it can only be a matter of time before they appear on international cat-walks.
My grateful thanks are due to Steve Duncan and his team for giving the Lieutenancy new insights into initiatives in your valley. We were very grateful for the welcome and hospitality shown to us.
Ingrid Roscoe Lord-Lieutenant and President, Community Foundation for Calderdale
Learn more about the volunteer work that took place at Cross Stone Cemetery in association with the Mortgages and Insurance team from Halifax Plc, Part of the Lloyds Banking Group in "A Day to Make a Difference"
