One of the Harrogate district’s finest churches is to open to visitors and local residents this week after undergoing a £500,000 restoration.

St Wilfrid’s, on Coltsgate Hill in Ripon, will open from 10.30am to 4pm on Friday for the first in a series of four Heritage Open Days,.

The national programme sees historic places invite people to visit free of charge. The church, which opened in April 1863, is one of this year’s main attractions as it is considered to be one of England’s finest Catholic places of worship.

The grade II* listed building was designed in French Gothic style by the prolific York architect Joseph Hansom, inventor of the Hansom cab.

Features include stained and coloured glass, an imposing altar screen or reredos designed by Edward Pugin depicting scenes from the life of St Wilfrid and other fine statuary, carvings and artwork.

Windows in the tower were replaced as part of the refurbishment.

These include ornate medallions of saints above the nave arches by Salviati of Venice, and the side altar of Our Lady of Fountains, brought  from the private chapel of the Marquess of Ripon  at Studley Royal after his death.

The marquess converted to Catholicism in 1874 – six years before becoming viceroy and governor general of India.

Born at 10 Downing Street, when his father Viscount Goderich was briefly Prime Minister, he was a towering parliamentary figure in Victorian Britain and a major donor to St Wilfrid’s and to Ripon, where he was elected as the city’s mayor in 1897.

An addition to the 158-year history of St Wilfrid’s is a dramatic holograph-style set of stations of the cross, commissioned by a benefactor to the restoration appeal.

Many local people and organisations donated to the fundraising programme headed by parishioner Barrie Price.

This, combined with a Heritage Fund lottery grant, provided the money needed for the restoration and will fund further improvements, among them better access to the church.

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In addition to Friday’s open day, three more open days will be held on Saturday and Sunday and on Thursday next week.

Entry is via the front door steps or ramp on Coltsgate Hill and parking spaces are available in the church car park, accessed via Trinity Lane.

In Medieval times Magdalens Road was one of the principal routes into Ripon – a place that had grown in importance and religious significance from 672 AD when Wilfrid established the church where the city’s cathedral now stands.

That iconic building will be the focus of much attention next year. Services and celebrations are to be held to mark the 1350th anniversary since Ripon’s Patron Saint created the foundation upon which the city was built.

It is one of three Grade I listed buildings in Ripon, enjoying the same English Heritage (now Historic England) categorisation with the obelisk on Market Square.

That 82-foot structure, was built in 1702 and paid for by John Aislabie of Studley Royal water garden fame and, 18 years later, South Sea Bubble infamy.

In their prominent locations, Ripon’s cathedral and obelisk are two of the city’s best-known and loved Grade 1 listed buildings – but where is the third?

The answer takes us back down Magdalens Road and a small chapel that sits modestly in its well-kept grounds.

Dating back to the 12th century, the Chapel of the Hospital of St Mary Magdalen, completes Ripon’s Grade I set.

Founded by Thurstan of Caen, who was Archbishop of York from 1114 to 1140, the chapel is the only complete fragment of any of Ripon’s medieval hospitals to survive from the time of its foundation.

It had sisters and a priest, whose duties were to feed and shelter lepers, maintain blind priests born in Ripon, and give alms to the poor.

Anne Priestley, who rings the bell to beckon the Sunday congregation to the chapel

For Anne Priestley and Joyce Pearson, it is a building that they have marvelled over for years.

They live in the Almshouses of the Hospital of St Mary Magdalene, across the road and are two of the three keyholders for anybody wanting to visit and find out more about this hidden and historically-important gem.

Ms Priestley, said:

“This was the site of Ripon’s leper hospital – one of many created in England during the medieval period when leprosy was sweeping the land.”

In an echo, that comes all the way back to today, she said:

“The disease was far-reaching and a strain of it was thought to have been brought back to this country from men infected during the crusades.”

She added:

“Over nearly 1,000 years, this chapel has survived leprosy, the Black Death, plague, Spanish flu and now the covid pandemic.”

Keyholder Joyce Pearson, with her dog Eddie, says visitors are always welcome

Eucharist services, led by a roster of retired clergy, are held each Sunday at 10am and the chapel’s bell is rung for five minutes beforehand to beckon a congregation of up to 20.

Among that congregation is Ms Pearson, who said:

“We welcome visitors and most of them are amazed when they hear about the chapel’s history. It is very much one of Ripon’s hidden gems.”

Apart from the Sunday morning services, the chapel remains locked, but people who would like to look around it, can call on the keyholders who live at 44, 50 and 52 Magdalens Road.

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The Knaresborough Museum is taking shape as the team creating it has applied for an extra £60,000 in grant funding.

The Knaresborough Museum Association (KMA) already raised £43,000 earlier this year to get plans underway but it is now going for more funding to make them a reality.

It plans to open the first Knaresborough Town Museum in the former Castle Girls’ School in Castle Yard.

The plans for the building include a reception and shop, permanent and temporary display areas, an education space, toilets and wheelchair access.

The KMA had previously hoped to have the museum open for the end of the year but covid has delayed negotiations with Harrogate Borough Council.

The KMA said it is anticipating signing the lease for the building “soon” and opening in 2022.

Association chair Kathy Allday said:

“It is all happening on the Museum front! Knaresborough Museum Association are now working with geology, archaeology and social history museums around the country to bring artefacts back to Knaresborough.”

Plans unveiled for the Knaresborough Town Museum

Work is currently underway to bring its prehistory and geology display together. The plan is to display fossils of the now extinct animals that roamed the town 300 million years ago.

A programme of archaeological surveys have also started in the Abbey Road and Spitalcroft areas. The KMA volunteers are working with  academics from Leeds, York and America.

All the surveys are to create a medieval exhibit which will display a model of the Trinitarian priory and artefacts from the 13th century.

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Other exhibits will see the reconstruction of Marigold’s Boat so visitors can sit and learn about the town rom the Victorian era to the 1960s.

Local children are also getting involved in a film to tell the story of wartime in Knaresborough and the history of the Olde Chemiste Shoppe.

Local residents have the chance to ask questions about the museum and its plans at its Pop Up Museum event for the FEVA festival. Volunteers will be based at St Mary’s Church Hall on August 14 and 15.

The Harrogate district’s historical buildings, churches and graveyards will open to the public for free again in September as part of a national scheme to encourage people to explore history on their doorstep.

Heritage Open Days, which is billed as England’s largest festival of history and culture, will run from September 10 to 19.

Harrogate Civic Society and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which maintains Stonefall cemetery, are among those leading the initiative locally.

The civic society has arranged for numerous churches and other landmarks to open for free guided tours. The Gothic revival chapel at Rudding Park, built in 1874, will be included for the first time.

Another new feature this year will be walking tours around places such as Valley Drive and the civic centre. The civic society has organised these in case covid restrictions are in place.

Free guided tours of the Commonwealth War Graves at Stonefall cemetery will also be available.

The civic society will release the full Heritage Open Days programme in the weeks ahead.

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A Harrogate academic has published a book detailing the escapades of a team of female special agents during the Second World War.

Author, academic and historian Dr Kate Vigurs documents the heroic acts of the renowned Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Mission France: The True History of the Women of SOE.

While a few of the 39 women involved are recognised as war heroes, many have been forgotten.  The ‘group biography’ tells each individual’s story.

Missions for these ordinary women-turned-agents involved parachuting into enemy lines, planting explosives, and fighting on the front lines. They were the only women in the Western Allies to bear arms during the entire war.

One such hero, Paris-born Noor Inayat Khan, was a poet, musician and writer. When the war came, she trained to become a wireless operator here in Harrogate and went on to be a notorious agent, evading the Gestapo for three years before her eventual capture in 1943.

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Dr Vigurs has been studying the Special Operations Executive for a number of years and wrote her PhD on the topic;

“I wanted to tell all 39 stories in one book as a sort of group biography; looking at their past lives, and the ways they interacted with each other. They were ordinary people who were taught to do extraordinary things. Many were housewives, thrust into a world of war.”

She has worked on a number of historical projects including writing television and stage scripts for historical adaptations and speaking on the national news.

She said she hopes to continue to study the SOE in the future and look into the lives of the many other agents who were a part of it.

The book has been praised by Military History and was also named book of the month by History Revealed. More about the novel can be found on Dr Vigurs’ website.

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 31^st August 1920.

Oxford Street 1920’s : arcade and cinema

No sooner had the Central Cinema been opened, than it was followed on 29^th 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 17^th 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 28^th 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 18^th 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. 

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. 

The death of Harriet Rodwell, who committed suicide in the city’s workhouse in 1855, features in a new exhibition opening in Ripon today.

Ms Rodwell’s hard life and sad demise is remembered in Fragments — one of five textile installations.

Created by 6-Ply — a group of North Yorkshire textile artists — it is part of the Lives Unravelled exhibition at Ripon’s Workhouse Museum.

The display, dedicated to Ms Rodwell and created by Eileen Sweeney, reflects the fact that only fragments of the former inmate’s life remain.

The Prison & Police Museum – one of Ripon’s three heritage attractions now reopened for visitors

The new exhibition marks the reopening of the city’s three heritage attractions.

The workhouse, along with the Prison & Police and Old Courthouse are operated by Ripon Museum Trust.

The custom-made Lives Unravelled exhibition is Inspired by historical research into the lives of workhouse women.

It will be on display until September 5.

Artists have used a variety of materials and techniques to convey the real experiences and imagined emotions of being a woman in the workhouse.

Pieces installed as part of the exhibition, also include Room for Mother and Infant, by Hazel Waite; Jane Button’s “Fancy Apron”, by Sarah Lowe; Veg, Glorious Veg, by Mary Exelby and Apron of Feelings, by Jenny Bradbury.

Helen Thornton, director of Ripon Museum Trust said:

“It’s so exciting to be able to reopen our museums with this very moving and powerful temporary exhibition by local textiles group 6-Ply.

“We’re delighted to share these works with visitors and I hope they encourage people to consider the lives of people who lived and died here.”

Following today’s reopening, the museums will be open Tuesday to Sunday and on selected Bank Holidays, including bank holiday Monday, May 31.

Entrance to the exhibition is included in the cost of museum entry. All tickets to Ripon museums are valid for repeat visits over a 12-month period.

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Bookings can be made via the museum trust website or by calling 01765 690799.

Ripon Museums have covid safety measures in place and have been awarded the Visit Britain We’re Good to Go industry standard.

A celebration tinged with sadness is to be held to mark the closure of a 200-year-old primary school near Masham this summer.

Kell Bank Church of England Primary School can accommodate up to 50 pupils but currently has just six.

Because of dwindling numbers, North Yorkshire County Council has issued a closure notice, which means the school will close permanently on August 31.

Staff want to celebrate the school’s history and, as part of this, are asking people to come forward with their memories and old photos for a commemorative newspaper.

The school has also put out a call to find the oldest former pupil. It is hoped whoever it is will join the youngest pupil at a ceremony in July.

All submissions for the celebration need to be in by June 11.

Laurie Hoyes, a school governor, said:

“Kell Bank School was founded in 1820 to provide an education for the local children of Fearby, Healey and the surrounding villages.

“This wonderful local school, ideally placed to learn from nature, has excelled and achieved so many accolades during its long, educational journey and has provided a safe environment and vast source of knowledge to generations of local people.

“The celebrations in July will be tinged with great sadness, as Kell Bank is to close at the end of the summer term.”

Ms Hoyes, alongside other members of the school community, hopes the exhibition will highlight the key role the school has played in local people’s lives.

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