Harrogate Neighbours overcame the problem of social distancing to put on a special day of VE Day celebrations for the residents of The Cuttings in Starbeck and Heath Lodge in Harrogate. Drake’s Fish and Chips in Knaresborough arrived with an appropriately-dressed team to deliver lunch.

A festival designed to bring people together online has proved a hit with communities across the Harrogate district.

HG Community Lockdown Fest has more than 60 activities scheduled across the bank holiday weekend, including VE Day celebrations on Friday. Among the online performances was a wartime-style song from The Haddow Sisters in Harrogate (shown above), reminiscent of popular 1940s group The Andrews Sisters.

Each session is free, but participants are being encouraged to donate what they can to Harrogate Hospital and Community Charity when they sign up. The fundraising total at the end of Friday stood at £500.

On top of that, Harrogate Town AFC is putting its weight behind the weekend, auctioning off a signed shirt this afternoon and contributing more than £600 for the charity.

Local history

Mental health webinars, children’s Spanish classes, cooking workshops and an online beer-tasting will be held today. Tomorrow, with the weather expected to turn colder, organisers are hopeful that the programme of interior design, floristry, singing, yoga and local history will prove even more popular.

Rebecca Oliver, who helped to put the weekend of events together, said:

“It’s impossible to say how many participants we’ve had, but every event has had someone taking part – despite the amazing weather! We’ve got some great sessions still to come, including plenty on Sunday which are ideal for a rainy day.”

For more information, visit the event’s website: www.hglockdownfest.co.uk.

Police have named a man found dead in Harrogate this week as Aaron Atkinson.

The 38-year-old’s body was discovered at a property in Harrogate in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Two men, aged 46 and 40, arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery, have now been released on bail.

North Yorkshire Police said investigations into the death are continuing and further forensic tests are being carried out, but detectives are treating it as suspected murder. Officers have reassure the public that it was an isolated incident.

A Harrogate veteran who survived the D Day landings was the star of one of the town’s VE Day celebrations yesterday.

Sergeant John Rushton, known as “Jack” among friends had his spirits lifted as residents on his street went to great lengths to make his day special.

Jack is 95 years old and has been inside his house on Beech Road in Harrogate since lockdown started. But thanks to Vic- Smith Dunn, who lives on his street and runs the Oatlands community group, there was socially distant celebrations.

There was a heartwarming performance from 14-year-old Lucy Hall, who was playing the bagpipes as well a visit from Lieutenant Col Richard Hall who is the commanding officer at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate.

Jack leant out his window to watch all the goings-on throughout the afternoon.

Jack was ready to celebrate.

Merryfield cul-de-sac off Hartley Road in Harrogate where they had decked the road out in red, white and blue..

Alistair Ratcliffe (above) from the Oatlands Community Group prepared tea parcels to give out to the elderly and vulnerable. The group delivered around 150 today. One of the happy recipients who raised a glass to the group to say thank you….

Along Mallinson Oval there was a carnival atmosphere…

The residents of Tewitt Well Road in Harrogate came out in force this afternoon to sing the National Anthem and raise a glass to commemorate VE Day..

Here are more images from a noisy, happy road enjoying the day:

A Harrogate veteran who survived the D Day landings will be the star of one of the town’s VE Day celebrations today.

John Rushton, who is also known as Jack, will be the guest of honour at Beech Road where the street will hold a socially distant party in their front gardens.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hall of the Army College will also join in the celebrations with his daughter playing The Battle O’er & Balmoral as they drive past in a vintage car at 4pm.

Jack was born in Doncaster on May 24, 1924, where he was brought up and educated before leaving school to become an apprentice joiner.

At the outbreak of World War II because he was too young to enlist, he joined the home guard before he volunteered for service shortly after his 18th birthday.

On the night of June 5, 1944, he set off from Portsmouth, having been sent in place of another marine who had been taken ill.

The crossing was made in a flat bottomed tank landing craft, and as the weather was poor, he sheltered with a comrade underneath one of the tanks, lying on top of the ammunition.

The crossing was so rough that he later said that he preferred being shot at in France to staying on board.

Jack during his military service.

Arriving on the Normandy beach at 6am on June 6 he proceeded to deploy and arm his unit’s tanks and guns and spent much of the assault without his helmet or rifle as they impeded his tasks.

During that day, he narrowly avoided death three times including running over an anti-tank mine several times. He often says with a wry smile that only the good die young. He also says that the real heroes are the ones who didn’t return home.

Having been promoted to Sergeant, Jack was then sent out to India, travelling by ship and often sleeping on riveted steel decks. On arrival in Bombay his unit was tasked with keeping the peace during the country’s internal struggles, and later training to join the war against Japan further east.

In 1945 he was sent to Malaysia to await deployment to the battlefront, however when the atomic bombs were dropped, he was spared the ordeal of the next fight.

Although the war was now over, his unit was sent back to India to help quell a naval mutiny, and as a result, he didn’t make it home until 1946, when he was demobbed, and returned to Doncaster.

He moved jobs and towns before he settled in 1972 with a final family move to Harrogate College of Further Education.

Jack retired in 1988 and turned to his interests in the local brass bands and the Royal Naval Association. He was widowed in 2012 after almost 61 years of marriage and has four children, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

This History is written for The Stray Ferret by Harrogate historian, Malcolm Neesam:

On Tuesday 8^th May 1945 a full sized likeness of Adolph Hitler gazed across West Park Stray surrounded by a replica of his Mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. It had been placed there as the crowning display of a huge bonfire and assembled by the Harrogate Home Guard, who, at dusk, stormed the display, and to frantic cheering from the assembled townspeople, captured the effigies of Hitler and his cronies, before the Mayor lit the bonfire that burned “Berchtesgaden” to the ground. Beyond this scene of rejoicing, Harrogate was a sea of bunting and the flags of allied nations, which filled not only the town centre, but nearly every suburban street as well. In the main shopping streets at the town’s centre were displayed large portraits of the King and Queen, Prime Minister Churchill and allied leaders, Field Marshall Montgomery and other military luminaries.

Street party Harrogate 1945

Joyous crowds surged through the town centre that day, whose drab and neglected appearance, the result of five years, eight months and five days of wartime austerity, was temporarily brightened by brightly coloured displays, although the need to conserve energy precluded the use of gas or electric power, exceptions being made at the Royal Baths, and Municipal Offices where Mayor G. Spenceley had greeting the crowds gathered in Crescent Gardens. People continued to surge through the centre of the town throughout the day, despite heavy rain showers, although the streets cleared in time for both the Prime Minister’s broadcast, and the King’s speech.

Harrogate residents pose for VE day 1945

The borough court continued to function on VE Day, the main business being concerned with granting licences for dancing and extensions for liquor and music, all essential aspects of the coming celebrations on the following Sunday, which at the request of the King, would be a day of national thanksgiving and prayer. A service was planned at St. Peter’s Church attended by the Mayor and full Corporation, followed by a brief ceremony at the War Memorial in remembrance of the fallen. In the afternoon, a grand parade was to occur on West Park, when participants would include American military personnel, units of the Home Guard and Civil Defence, representatives from the British Legion, St. John Ambulance Brigade, the Scouts and the Guides. Flag bearing youth groups present included the Sea Cadets, Army Cadet Corps, Air Training Corps, Girls Training Corps, Boys Brigade, and the Civil Defence Messengers. After a short open air service, the parade marched via West Park and Parliament Street to the Municipal Officers in Crescent Gardens, where the Mayor took the salute from a specially constructed platform. The Mayor’s rousing speech reminded the townspeople of the ordeal they had undergone, and that until Japan had been overcome, the resolve of the people must be continued. He ended his speech with the sincere thanks of the entire Corporation for what the townspeople had achieved through their great sacrifice.

This History is written for The Stray Ferret by Harrogate historian, Malcolm Neesam:

At the outbreak of war on 1st September 1939, Harrogate’s population experienced the greatest transformation of its history. There was a big influx of evacuated civil servants and their families from London and other major cities which the government feared would immediately be subjected to mass bombing. In addition, hundreds of evacuated children were billeted in the town. And then, within weeks, the town was made the centre for the allied pilots training scheme, whereby hundreds of pilots and other airmen – British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealanders, Indians, French, Polish etc. – eventually received training in the struggle against Hitler. Within weeks, Harrogate was crowded, the air being filled with often strange accents, some recognisable, others unfamiliar. 

Then there were the new norms to be observed. Strict rationing of food, fuel and power, and the disappearance of many valued consumable objects from the shops, where queuing became an unwelcome practice. Conscription emptied the town of its young men, and so many of its young women took on new and unaccustomed work roles that the older generation predicted a social revolution after the war. 

Harrogate’s schools were provided with air raid shelters, and staff and pupils drilled in what to do in case of an attack.  All children had to carry gas masks, as the horrors of the First World War were still within living memory.  

Ploughing on the Stray 1941

Within a month of the start of hostilities, the Stray was used to graze sheep, but in June 1940, the Council agreed to plough 102 acres to grow crops. The Valley Gardens flower beds were converted into vegetable plots, but as the local dogs caused too much damage, the beds were planted with annual seeds instead. Land throughout the town was used to provide allotments, including areas of the Stray at Leeds Road, the railway sides, the Granby and Empress. Several huge water tanks were put up around the town to fight fires, with one of the biggest located on the Stray opposite Victoria Avenue. 

Salvage was collected assiduously, with most of the town’s ornamental railings being torn up and carted away. Pig bins became a common site, and even the grandest of houses kept a bin where scarp food was stored for weekly collection, although these soon became a source of complaint as they became smelly. 

The town received a visit from a solitary Nazi bomber on 12th September 1940 when bombs were dropped on the Hotel Majestic, destroying the hotel’s great Wintergarden, a house in Swan Road, and blowing out nearly every shop window in the town centre. Naturally this only stiffened morale, which received a great boost when Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Field Marshall Montgomery visited Harrogate in 1944, where they were photographed with the Mayor at the railway station. 

The bombing of Swan Road Villa 1940

 Although the Royal Hall and the town’s six cinemas were all closed at the outbreak of war, due to fear of mass bombing, they soon reopened and provided much needed entertainment throughout the conflict. Many local amateur groups flourished, as did groups from the evacuated civil servants and the various military forces stationed in the town. At the highest of professional levels, all the big London theatres sent their shows to Harrogate, and in 1941 alone, visits were made by the Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells, The Royal Ballet, the Old Vic, and the London Symphony Orchestra.  

Humour thrived, and the British Restaurant chain became the butt of many jokes about gristle, bone and lumpy custard, Harrogate’s British Restaurant being housed in Wesley Chapel’s School Room. At an official level, the Council agonised about the future of the Spa, and everyone knew that things would never be the same again when peace was declared.                                  

Malcolm Neesam- Biography

Malcolm Neesam was born in Harrogate and graduated from the University of Leeds as a professional archivist and librarian. He subsequently worked in Hereford, Leeds, London and York where, for twenty-five years, he was North Yorkshire’s County Music and Audiovisual Librarian.  Malcolm is a much-published author. In 1996 Harrogate Borough Council awarded Malcolm the Freedom of the Borough for his services as the town’s historian.

This is the first time Malcolm has written for The Stray Ferret- and we will be publishing much more from him in the future as he has kindly agreed to write many histories of Harrogate for us in the coming year.  We hope you enjoy reading them. 

Elderly residents in Harrogate have shared their memories of VE Day as the country prepares to mark its 75th anniversary tomorrow.

Continued Care’s staff have spoken to their elderly residents, who were young men and women when on May 8, 1945.

One woman who was 15-years-old at the time recalled how there was a huge street party on Albert Road, with every house flying Union Jack flags.

She described seeing tables laid out from one end of the street to the other, with enough room was dancing in the road and footpaths.

A loud speaker played records by Vera Lynn and other famous singers, and the tables “bulged with food” such as jellies, trifles, sandwiches and pies.

She said: “I don’t know where all the food came from; it was like magic. We hadn’t seen so much food for months! There were bananas, and one or two children didn’t know what to do with them. They didn’t know whether to eat the whole lot or to peel it!”

Aged 16 on VE Day, one man described a street party on Mayfield Terrace, where residents of each house brought food and joined in.

He added: “This lockdown now feels like it’s bringing the wartime back again. Everything was rationed then and you couldn’t get much to eat.”

Photo: VE Day 75

Another Harrogate resident, who was brought up in London and spent much of the war in bomb shelters, described how she would pick up shrapnel as she walked to school.

However, she added: “I always felt perfectly safe. It was very strange, really.”

Aged 17 on VE Day, she said she would be marking the 75th anniversary with her neighbour while observing social distancing rules.

She said: “My neighbour has said we are going out in the front to do a bit of celebrating. I said I would be quite happy to do that. I can sit on the porch – and I’m sure there will be a glass of wine somewhere!”

Continued Care’s director Samantha Harrison said: “For those of us who did not live through the Second World War and for whom VE Day is a moment in history, it’s easy to forget that it is still very real for the older generation. It’s a privilege to hear them recall their memories in such vivid detail, and we are proud to be caring for them today.”