Harrogate primary school raises 10 times charity target

A Harrogate primary school has raised £2,420 for Cancer Research UK, which is nearly 10 times the original target.

Woodfield Community Primary School took part in the Race for Life Schools programme on May 14 and has since smashed its £250 goal.

Around 60 pupils, aged three to 11 years old, took part in the event to raise money for life-saving research.

Jo Marwood, who is head of school at Woodfield Primary School, said:

“We set a target of £250 for the school to raise and thought that would be an amazing achievement for our small school.

“So to see the total going up and up with each donation we were over the moon!

“We’d like to thank everyone, our students, our staff, our families and our local community who have cheered us on and donated to such an important cause.”

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Sarah Pickersgill, head of events marketing for Cancer Research UK, said:

“Organising a Race for Life Schools event is a fantastic way for schools to have fun, whilst raising money for a good cause.

“The money raised by Woodfield School will help our scientists find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, helping to save more lives.

“So, we thank all the pupils, parents and teachers for their vital support.”

Malcolm Neesam History: the heyday of Harrogate’s cinemas

This history is written for The Stray Ferret by celebrated Harrogate historian, Malcolm Neesam. 

I should be surprised if many Harrogate people realised that for many years, the town’s biggest cinema was the Royal Hall, with its then 1,300 seats. This may seem doubly surprising, as the Harrogate Corporation was not permitted to run a trading concern, nor was the private sector reluctant to invest in cinemas, yet despite this, the Royal Hall put on cinematographic presentations on an almost daily basis between 1908 and 1948, when screenings stopped.

When a new theatre opened on Skipton Road at Christmas 1914 – the Palace – it presented both variety shows and films, but by the end of the Great War, films predominated. Rather out on a limb, the Palace was very much a Bilton phenomenon, and in 1947 it changed its name to the ”Ritz” before finally closing in 1962. Harrogate’s other venue for film was the Empire Music Hall,  at Empire Buildings (now Cardamom Black restaurant in Cheltenham Parade) which like the Palace had opened for variety, but which in the 1920’s found cinema a more profitable exercise.

Early Harrogate cinema listing posters

The Kursaal’s only rival was the St. James’ Picture House in Cambridge Street, which in October 1908 occupied the St. James Coffee House and Conservative Club, whose Hall was suitable for film presentation, although of a primitive nature. It consisted of a projection unit at the centre of the room, with plank seats, and there are references to it having an “orchestra”.  Until the end of the Great War, Harrogate’s regular commercial screenings were restricted to the Kursaal and the St. James’ Cinema, but in 1920, everything changed.

Harrogate learned that it was to have a new custom-built cinema in May 1919, when permission was given to build. At the same time, a second cinema – the Scala – was announced for the western end of Cambridge Street. The Central Cinema was built within the surrounding property of the Central Arcade, exactly opposite the entrance to the Theatre. It was to have 1,000 seats, and an organ, and was opened by the Mayor on 31st August 1920.

Oxford Street 1920’s : arcade and cinema

No sooner had the Central Cinema been opened, than it was followed on 29th September 1920 by a second new “super cinema”, the Scala,  in Cambridge Street, an impressive structure of gleaming white glazed tiles fronting an elaborate interior filled with polished Spanish mahogany, terrazzo floors and an auditorium accommodating 1,400 seats, some of which were in the form of private boxes.

The Scala Cinema Cambridge Street

After the arrival in 1928 of the Warner Brothers film, “Singing Fool”, with Al Jolson, the “talkies” were all the rage, and a new wave of cinema construction began. The Royal Hall purchased the Western Electric system in 1931 and began to screen popular musicals, such as the Fred Astair/Ginger Rogers films, and the Central converted at the same time..

On 17th June 1935, the Council approved plans from Odeon Theatres ltd for a new Cinema on East Parade which was initially publicised as having 1,800 seats. A flutter of excitement passed through the town’s many cinema enthusiasts, who realised that this was to be the first new cinema built in the town that was designed with “talking pictures” in mind, rather than an updated relic from the days of “silent” films. Named the “Odeon”, the new cinema had been designed by the famed architect Harry W. Weedon for Odeon Theatres Ltd whose Managing Director, Oscar Deutsch, was rumoured not to like cinema organs. Whatever the truth of this, the new Odeon had no organ, but was furnished with the latest sound reproduction equipment manufactured by the British Thomson-Houston Company.

Externally, the strikingly handsome art deco design was faced with cream and black tiles, highlighted with neon lighting strips in orange. Internally, perfect screen viewing was available from every one of the ground floor’s 1,000 and the balcony’s 600 seats, due to there being no pillars, and the décor was predominantly gold and silver, countered by carpets and upholstery in blue and green. The £50,000 Odeon Cinema was opened by the Mayor, Councillor S. Cartright, on Monday 28th September 1936, in the presence of Mr. and Mrs Oscar Deutsch, 1,600 guests, and the Band of the16/5th Lancers.

Odeon Cinema 1943 – Allied pilots reception to see The Way Ahead

The opening of the new Odeon Cinema in 1936 was followed within a year by the opening of what was advertised as Harrogate’s seventh cinema – including the Royal Hall. Plans for a 1,646 seater cinema had been submitted to the Council by Associated British Cinema, who had negotiated with St. Peter’s Schools for their old site in Cambridge Road north of St. Peter’s Church.  The new cinema, named the “Regal”, had been designed by Harrogate architect H. Linley Bown.

The work of site clearance began after Easter 1936. The Cambridge Road frontage running up to the main entrance next to St. Peter’s Church, had a further five shops, all of which produced a good income from rentals. By the time the Regal was ready to be opened by Mayor Harry Bolland on Saturday 18th September 1937, the main auditorium has been fitted with 1,120 seats and the balcony had 526, making a total seating capacity of 1,646.  The internal décor was of gold and red, whose warm, rich tones were very different from those at the Odeon.  The greatest difference between the two new cinemas was that whereas the Odeon had no organ, the Regal had a magnificent Compton (see feature image), which had its console on a rising platform, placed where a theatre’s orchestral pit would normally be positioned.

Harrogate lost several of its cinemas during the 1960’s, when the Central, Ritz, Gaumont (formerly the Scala) and St. James’ Cinemas all closed, but in 2016 the splendid new Everyman Cinema opened in Station Parade on the site of the former Beales Department store. With a seating capacity for 400, and an attractive range of cafes and restaurant facilities, the building is an important addition to the town’s entertainment and leisure amenities.

 

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Did you know that the Stray Ferret has teamed up with Malcolm to produce audio walking tours of Harrogate? The walks are sponsored by the Harrogate Business Improvement District (BID) and take you back to the Golden Age of the Harrogate Spa and a walk through the Commercial Heart of Harrogate.  

Why not take a walk back in time and learn about Harrogate’s glorious past.. They’re easy to do and a great day out. For more information click here. 

Urgent police appeal to find missing Harrogate teenager

North Yorkshire Police tonight issued an urgent plea for help to find missing Harrogate teenager Lucy Morris.

Lucy, 17, has not been seen  by her family in Harrogate since May 15 when it was believed she was heading to Leeds to stay with a friend.

A police statement said:

“Worryingly, there have been no text messages or social media contact from her since May 22, which is out of character and further raises concerns about her safety.

“Lucy, if you see or hear about this appeal, please get in touch with the police immediately and let your family know you are safe.”

Lucy is described as white, 5ft 3in tall, blue eyes, slim build and she has shoulder-length blonde hair. She has a tattoo on her left hand which says ‘blessed’.

It is not known what clothes she had on when she went missing.

West Yorkshire Police is also assisting the missing person investigation in the Leeds area.

Anyone with information is asked to call North Yorkshire Police on 101, select option 1, and speak to the force control room, quoting reference number 12210122535.

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Just one coronavirus case in Harrogate district

There has been just one positive coronavirus case reported today in the Harrogate district, according to Public Health England.

It brings the total number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus since the pandemic began to 7,761.

The daily number of cases reported is now based on PCR and lateral flow tests returning positive results.

However, if someone with a positive lateral flow test later has a negative result with a PCR test, the earlier result will be removed.

The daily number of cases has remained low, but the seven day average for the district has creeped up to 21,

NHS England no longer reports coronavirus deaths from hospitals over weekends or on Bank Holidays, just on weekdays.

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Kimberley Hotel owner goes into liquidation amid £3.5m debts

The owner of the Kimberley Hotel in Harrogate has filed for liquidation amid over £3.5m debts to local companies as well as HM Revenue and Customs.

Insolvency firm Booth & Co was appointed to wind up Denison 2 earlier this week.

In December 2020 the hotel announced it had permanently closed due to the impact of covid.

Its sole director, Stewart Lewis, is still a director of several other hospitality and property companies that are still trading.

There are 80 entries on Denison 2’s list of creditors totalling £3.5m. £2.6m of this is to its sister company Denison which has the same registered address in York.

Other creditors include HM Revenue and Customs for £338,935 and Harrogate Business Improvement District (BID) for £1,380. Almost £27,000 is also owed to staff in holiday pay.

The Stray Ferret emailed Mr Lewis for a response and for information on the future of the hotel but we did not receive a reply.

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The 70-bedroom, four-star hotel, close to Harrogate Convention Centre on King’s Road, had been welcoming guests for over 50 years.

A post on the hotel’s social media channels in December said:

“It comes with a heavy heart that we have to tell all our loyal guests and friends that due to the financial position caused by covid, we unfortunately have to close the hotel.

“We sincerely thank everyone, customers and staff alike, that have supported us over the years and regret deeply that covid placed us in a situation that we cannot recover from.”

The Kimberley Hotel opened in the 1960s when five townhouses dating back to the turn of the 20th century were converted.

It benefitted from the opening of what was then called the Harrogate Conference Centre in 1982, which is a short walk away.

The properties were originally built as homes for some of the wealthier families in Harrogate during its Victorian expansion.

Hundreds attend free war graves tours at Harrogate’s Stonefall cemetery

Tours were held throughout the day at Stonefall cemetery in Harrogate yesterday as part of the first war graves week, which was organised by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Stonefall, which has more than 1,000 graves, is one of the largest war grave sites in northern England and one of only five directly maintained by the commission. About two-thirds of the dead are Canadian.

The cemetery was created in 1914 but most burials are airmen who died during the Second World War when bomber command bases were established in Yorkshire.

Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones, Lieutenant colonel Simon Farebrother, commanding officer of the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, Harrogate mayor Trevor Chapman and Johanna Ropner, the Lord-Lieutenant of North Yorkshire were among those attending the tours.

They heard the stories of some of the dead, including Isikeli Komaisavai, 24, believed to be the only Fijian who flew with the British Royal Air Force and two 17-year-old Canadians who lost their lives.

War graves week gave those unable to travel to burial sites in Flanders and Normandy because of covid the opportunity to discover the war heritage on their doorsteps.

It is hoped it will become an annual event.

The commission, which is funded by governments in six Commonwealth countries, maintains more than 12,500 war grave sites in virtually every town and city in the UK.

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To coincide with the week, it launched a postcode search function to enable people to search online for more than 4,000 war dead. It is available here.

Claire Horton, director general of the commission, said:

“By simply entering your postcode on our website you can take the first step towards making a new connection.

“We want people to share the stories they find and download a tribute for the men and women from their communities and display it in their window for War Graves Week.”

Ms Ropner said:

“I would encourage everyone to find out more about the men and women commemorated by CWGC here at Stonefall and indeed around the world.”

Plumpton Rocks to reopen in 2022 after several years of repairs

Plumpton Rocks is set reopen to the public in the spring of 2022 after several years of restoration works.

The Grade II* listed parkland and man-made lake fell into disrepair towards the end of the last century before Historic England added it to the “Heritage at Risk Register” in 2012.

Since then Historic England has worked with the current owners and pumped in more than £400,000.

The visitor attraction first closed for a major programme of repairs in 2013, which included works on the parkland, the dam and on the lake. It reopened three years later in 2016.

Plumpton Rocks closed again in October 2019 to do further work on the dam and bring it up to standard for the Reservoirs Act 1975.

However, the combination of extremely wet weather and heavy machinery forced the owners to pause the works until March 2020.

Coronavirus meant that the works were only able to restart in October 2020. Today the dam restoration is complete but remedial works remain for other areas of the site.

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Robert de Plumpton Hunter, who inherited Plumpton Rocks from his father in 2010, told the Stray Ferret:

“When we started work on the dam in October 2019 the conditions were horrific. It was supposed to take three months but the conditions were so desperate.

“So we got to December and we had not made much progress. We were doing more harm than good so we stopped to restart in March 2020 but that is when coronavirus hit.

“The dam works finished in January 2021 but we need to do more work on the paths and the parkland before we reopen.

“I only want to let people in when it’s safe with coronavirus and when it is looking as good as it can be.”

Hopefully that would mean no more works would be needed for the next 100 years, he added.

Plumpton Rocks restoration timeline

Confusion and queues over covid jab appointments

People in their 30s have been left confused about where to get a covid vaccination in the Harrogate district, with reports of long queues at the Knaresborough site.

This week the NHS announced the vaccination programme was being rolled out to 30 and 31-year-olds, who were able to book a jab through the national appointment service from Wednesday May 26.

One reader described the scene at the Knaresborough site this morning as “absolute chaos” with a long queue of people down the road, waiting to get in.

She said she had an appointment but was told she would need to wait for about an hour and a half, or could come back later when another pharmacist would be available.

Steve Culleton, an estate marshal at the Knaresborough site, apologised for the delay and said once people were checked into the venue, the aim was to get them jabbed and through to the observation area in three minutes.

Longer waits outside were due to a staff shortage, incidents on site that took staff away from the flow of vaccinations, and a higher than usual number of people turning up with incorrect appointment times, he said, noting that roadworks in the town had not helped.

Mr Culleton said that the pharmacists and other site staff were not involved with bookings, which were all made through the NHS 119 and National Booking Service.

He said:

“I’ve seen 1,100 people today. The overwhelming sentiment from all of them is ‘thank you very much, we appreciate it’.

“It’s a mixture of people turning up outside their appointment times, [booking] glitches and the lack of a full complement of staff.

“We are genuinely sorry that people had to wait, because that is not what we want. We just want people to come in, be jabbed, be observed and go.

“We want people to have a positive experience and go home happy. We know that there will be a few who are unhappy and for that I wholeheartedly apologise. It’s not what they expected, it’s not what we expected but it’s the way today turned out.”

Some people in their early 30s said they found that sites in Harrogate and Knaresborough were fully booked for several days, forcing them to book in Leeds, Pateley Bridge or Bradford.

After making alternative plans, two readers told the Stray Ferret that they received text invites from their GP surgery to make appointments directly due to “extra” supplies of the Pfizer vaccine.

A spokesman for NHS North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group said there were two ways to get an appointment, depending on whether vaccination sites were administered by GPs or the NHS National Booking Service.

He said:

“The Harrogate and Ripon vaccination sites are administered by GP practices – and sit outside of the National Booking Service processes.

“Practices are contacting eligible patients, directly, though quite a lot of activity at the moment is fulfilling second-dose obligations.”

He explained the Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge sites were part of the NHS National Booking Service infrastructure and not linked to the CCG or general practices.

NHS England North East and Yorkshire said:

“On occasion, appointment slots can be booked up quickly and thus won’t appear in the list of options online. More appointments are added regularly, so people are advised to try again later if they can’t or would rather not travel to another venue.”

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More than 105,000 first doses of a covid vaccine have now been given in the Harrogate district, according to Public Health England.

A total of 105,579 first and 69,241 second vaccines have been administered in the district.

It means the take-up rate in the district stands at 74.3% for a first dose and 48.7% for a second dose.

Harrogate library turns back time on town landmarks

Volunteers from Harrogate library have been turning back the clock on the town’s historic landmarks.

The team have worked with a local photographer to compare what Harrrogate looked like in the early 1900s to today.

Most of the work is currently on display at the library and will be until the end of July but the volunteers have also shared others on social media.

Our featured image shows the boating pool in Valley Gardens, which was taken by a Mark E. Mitchell in 1930.

It shows a few small sail boats in the water, which has clearly captured the imagination of visitors to Valley Gardens.

Today’s image, which was taken by Jonathan Turner, captures a much quieter boating lake in October 2020. The project has also captured life in the coronavirus lockdown.

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The below image shows the former J.Chippindale & Co shop taken by Asquith & Son in the early 1900s.

Today’s image shows how the building is now occupied by the Cardamom Black restaurant, with cars replacing the scores of bicycles on display.

The building has stood the test of time.

The Then and Now project was funded by a £5,000 grant from Libraries Connected Yorkshire and Humber.

Using photo editing software freely available on the library PCs, volunteers were able to produce side-by-side and composite images.

Cllr Greg White, the executive member for libraries, said:

“We’re really pleased with how the project has developed at Skipton, Scarborough and Harrogate.

“I understand that feedback from the groups was extremely positive.

“They all enjoyed learning about the history of their town and connecting with its past, and gained new skills using the free photo-editing software.”

Did you know that the Stray Ferret has teamed up with Harrogate Historian Malcolm Neesam to produce audio walking tours of Harrogate? The walks are sponsored by the Harrogate Business Improvement District (BID) and take you back to the Golden Age of the Harrogate Spa and a walk through the Commercial Heart of Harrogate.  

Why not take a walk back in time and learn about Harrogate’s glorious past.. They’re easy to do and a great day out. For more information click here. 

Stray art installation opens to help people reflect on covid dead

A giant art installation has opened on the Stray today to help people reflect on those who have lost their lives through coronavirus.

The piece, called In Memoriam, measures 36 metres in diameter and features more than 100 flags made from hospital bed sheets.

As well as a memorial to those who have died, it is also a tribute to those who have been on the frontline trying to save lives.

It’s been designed by award-winning artist Luke Jerram and will be on West Park Stray until June 7. After that it will move to Edinburgh, Fleetwood and Weston-super-Mare.

There is no entry fee and Harrogate International Festivals has commissioned a reflective piece of music called ‘A Moment of Time’, which you can find here.

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This is the first in a series of installations and events delivered in the months ahead by Harrogate International Festivals, which this year celebrates its 55th anniversary.

In Memoriam is being supported by Hornbeam Park Developments Ltd, Harrogate BID, and Swainsons Funeral Directors.

Sharon Canavar, Harrogate International Festivals chief executive, said

“Two years ago, we were lucky enough to bring Luke’s Museum of the Moon to St Wilfrid’s Church, which was one of the highlights of that summer’s international festival, and was visited by more than 10,000 people.

“As an arts charity delivering festivals and events, we were first to close and will be the last to open, but we can’t just open the doors on our venues and go straight back to normal.

“We wanted to create something unique in Harrogate that acknowledged the last year whilst allowing us to create a safe, outdoor event for the town.

“We don’t want people to just look at In Memoriam from afar, we want people to experience it; we want individuals, families and friends to walk into the heart of it; we want them to sit under the flags and quietly reflect the events of the last 15 months.”