WR Mitchell, who has known Hannah Hauxwell for most of that time, has brought her story up to date in a new book written to mark her 80th birthday.

Who, having seen Hannah Hauxwell when she made her television debut on a winter's evening in 1973, will ever forget that lonesome figure trudging with a pail of water in a snowbound landscape of Baldersdale, a little-known geographic cul-de-sac?

Television, then in its black-and-white phase, provided five million of us with a star in careworn clothes.

We were to become well acquainted with this quiet-mannered, reflective daleswoman who lived at a farm with the curious name of Low Birk Hatt and who had a favourite cow called Rosie. On a night when it was particularly cold in the farmhouse, Hannah had joined Rosie in the byre, drawing a pint of milk to drink, then, for comfort, settling down beside the cow's warm body.

That was the Hannah of the past – the Hannah my wife Freda and I got to know annually when we called to see her. Hannah was by her own admission a "late getter-up" so we left each visit until early afternoon. I recall a farm gate, repaired a dozen times with neatly-tied binder twice. A muck heap beside the byre was almost large enough to interest the Ordnance Survey. The front garden held an outstanding crop of nettles.

Hannah, working single-handed, had her priorities. The welfare of her cattle came first. Freda, being a farmer's daughter, understood this and shared with Hannah some of her recollections. For example, each of them had watched their mothers butter-making in the kitchen.

Summertime visitors to Low Birk Hatt included Kit Calvert, a great Dales character, who shared with Hannah a rock-hard religious faith. They walked arm-in-arm on a flagged path beside the farmhouse, with Hannah holding a muck-fork. And, of course, she wore wellingtons, "my best friends".

We arrived one summer to see her neighbour's tractor-drawn baling machine trundling down the meadow. Hannah marvelled at the speed of the operation.

She was shading her eyes from strong sunlight with a straw hat that had belonged to a great aunt. Freda had baked a sponge cake for her; we
were asked to leave it "under the calf bucket" – an upturned bucket,
anti-dog device – near the back door of the farmhouse.

Hannah Bayles Tallentire Hauxwell, to use her Sunday name, had for many years lived in what a visiting journalist called "solitary confinement". The first journalist to cross her threshold was Alec Donaldson of the Yorkshire Post, who was intrigued when he learnt that Hannah subsisted on an average of £3 a week.

The Hannah of today is an octogenarian living in the village of Cotherstone, six miles from her former home. This is where I met her on recent occasions while preparing a book to mark her 80th birthday.

Once asked what little pleasures she enjoyed at her new home, she replied: "The heating. And the bathroom. I was just thinking yesterday – when I was late, as always, getting ready – I haven't a pan of water to boil up and a bucket of cold water to mix in when it got hot."

She liked having things handy – the shop, for instance – "instead of having to traipse all over for everything... and I'm handy to the chapel when I'm able to go, which is not as much as I would like."

Each phase of life is linked with her strong religious faith.

Lacking all mod-cons at Low Birk Hatt, she read the Good Book and played hymns on a harmonium that had belonged to her mother.

While chatting with Hannah, I was entranced by some of her sayings. I have listed groups of them in the book. Of Low Birk Hatt, she said: "I'm not cut out to be in any other place" and "the old house and me will stay together for as long as we can". As mentioned, Hannah tends
to be always late, remarking that "I'm no good at rushing". Of marriage, she said "there was no-one really special in that line".

On book-signing occasions, she painstakingly included the name of the recipient and the date, thereby running contrary to modern business practices. In Skipton, when time came to close the shop, people were still queuing down the street. The shop was kept open – and coffee provided for the waiting throng.

Hannah did not care much for public speaking but was relaxed and entertaining when answering questions posed by members of an audience. Several times I presided at such meetings. At tiny Cartmel Church, where the seating capacity is 100, the chairman had to sit on the floor. That evening, Hannah and I had the company of her friends of the Cockfield Methodist Male Voice Choir, from the North East. When Hannah had been featured in the television series This is Your Life, it was the Cockfield choir that was brought the half-hour programme harmoniously to a close.

At a meeting I presided over at Cross Hills, Hannah was relaxed before a packed company. She leaned forward a little and tilted her head slightly when concentrating on a question and sat upright, Dales-way, to provide the answer. Someone asked: "What's it like being a celebrity?" Hannah did not think of herself as a celebrity. "I'm just me and I hope to remain so. Just a plain daleswoman."

Another questioner asked if Cotherstone was her Promised Land after her spell in the wilderness. Said Hannah: "It's a nice place to live. I was lucky. There were people living there I knew... There's always something going on."

My book includes her visits to Abbot Hall at Kents Bank, by the shore of Morecambe Bay. The manager collected her at home. I questioned her about her distinctive way of life. It was through Abbot Hall that Hannah met Cedric Robinson, Guide to the Sands of Morecambe Bay. Cedric, his wife and Hannah are firm friends.

The book mentions a jaunt from Abbot Hall into the Lake District. I drove Hannah to the head of Great Langdale on the day when the fells stood out as sharply as lines on an etching.

She was not impressed by great hills – either here or when Barry Cockcroft, of Yorkshire Television, had taken her on one of their Continental trips to the snow-topped Alps. Hannah had been reared in gentler terrain.

On my most recent meeting with Hannah at Cotherstone, she was in good form. Grey hairs peeped from under a red head scarf.

Her face frequently creased into a smile. She was continuing to enjoy a quiet sort of life, well suited to someone born in the dale-country, where life is hard but satisfying – and you do not waste too much time on words.

To order your copy of Hannah Hauxwell – 80 Years In the Dales at £18.75, including P&P, please call the order line on 01748 821122. Or send a cheque or postal order made payable to Yorkshire Books Ltd. Send to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond, North Yorks DL10 4QP.