Alf Wight: The man who was Herriot

When Alf Wight qualified as a veterinary surgeon in 1939, few jobs were available. He spent a short time with Jock Dowell, a vet whose practice was based in Sunderland, being paid three guineas a week, a third of which he handed to an aunt who provided him with bed and breakfast. The job lasted for six weeks.

Alf then found employment at Thirsk, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Alf was now based in a compact little town between the Pennines and the Moors, where several A-class roads converged, the church was like a mini-cathedral, there were two notable old inns and farmers thronged the place on market day, though most of the adjacent land was arable. "I think there was a chap called Hardwick who told somebody who told me about the job. So I dashed off to Thirsk and got the job – thank heavens!"

The name Jim Herriot did not appear in an official list of vets. Alf adopted it for his principal character (years later, the original Jim Herriot, footballer, visited Alf at Thirsk. They joyfully kicked and headed a football in the long garden extending behind the surgery).

I was making my first visit to Thirlby, the home of Alf, his wife, Joan, and Bodie, a border terrier. Mirebeck, the last house in the village, reposed behind a tall hedge. They had secreted themselves away in this quiet spot in the spring of 1979, just 10 years after Joan had urged Alf to submit the manuscript of his first Herriot book to a literary agent.

I commented – Yorkshirewise – that Alf's face was a "good colour". He told me he had been out and about, in the garden or on the hills, during most of a long sunny spell. At the mention of "colour," Alf laughed and recalled his young days as a vet visiting the dalehead farms with their memorable residents. "When they said you'd a bad colour, you got worried. I'm not a ruddy individual really but was told: 'Thou's lost a bit o'ground since I saw you last, Mr Wight.' Or, 'I think you've failed a bit, you know'."

As a newly qualified vet, Alf had entered the farming world with a special knowledge of five species of animal – horse, ox, sheep, pig and dog.

"The dog was the last one and the poor old cat never got a mention... the world of the vet was 'large animal' orientated. We were trained as horse doctors right through." Everything else was secondary.

"It was rather absurd, for although there were a fair number of horses around when I qualified, you could see that the tractor had taken over almost completely. You didn't see many horse-drawn carts in the street..."

Alf, ensconced at Thirsk, found himself in "a quiet little place". Donald Sinclair, whose practice it was, had business links with Frank Bingham, a vet based in Leyburn, Wensleydale.

"The trouble with Frank was that it was just at the beginning of the tuberculin testing scheme. He couldn't do it, being a man of 58. I was just 24. So they called on us at Thirsk to provide another man." That man was Alf. There now began a love affair with the Pennine

dale-country.

Frank Bingham, a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Irishman, had a Swiss wife called Emmy and two sons, living at a small house called Tyrella. Mrs Bingham, a talented lady, served up some wonderful meals.

Alf, having set off from Thirsk to Leyburn with a pack of cheese sandwiches to nourish him through the day, found to his delight Emmy fed him on stews, apple pies and cakes.

Alf visited Leyburn on three days a week, setting off from Thirsk at about 6am and returning the same evening after a busy day. Leyburn impressed Alf by dint of its enormous market place. "When I first knew the place, it had its grocer's shop, a fishmonger and a butcher. And that was about it. It was a one-horse town if ever I saw one." Many apocryphal tales were told about Frank. "He was a wonderful chap. One of my favourite men. He was very kind to me. Frank had a car, though some vets were still going about on motorbikes."

A magic moment in his early association with the Yorkshire Dales came after he had been motoring over Bellerby Moor, from Leyburn to Grinton.

He drew the car off the unfenced road to let out the dog. Sitting on a rock outcrop, he looked along the valley of the Swale towards Richmond. He was struck by the beauty of the area. "I felt as though I had suddenly been transported into a magical land."

Alf recalled: "A week's work in Thirsk would bring in from 3 to 5. A week's TB testing earned between 20 and 30. You could see where the work was."

The Dales formed an eradication area in which testing was compulsory. TB was a threat to humans as well as cattle, leading to the death of some of those who drank milk from infected stock. In the old days, when there were no plastic gloves, vets suffered from brucellosis and consequent undulant fever, a depressive illness.

Alf met farmers who were dabbling with "cures" not far removed from black magic. That was probably what motivated him to write a book in the first place. "It was a very funny time in veterinary practice, with all those awful old treatments."

The most widespread breed of cattle was Shorthorn. Alf described it as a "pretty, gentle animal," adding that it was subject to "all those awful old treatments. A cow went down. The farmer would say it had 'a worm in its tail'. The cow wouldn't get up. So they cut off its tail. Another farmer kept a billy goat (which stank) in the shippon to prevent contagious abortion. He thought the smell would help to cure the complaint.

"Abortion hit a herd only once. The animals developed an immunity. The billy goat got the credit."

The type of hill farm Alf visited formed part of a "fellside culture" in which a farmer stoically coped with thin soils, a high rainfall and protracted winters. Haytime was as late as July. Grass, mown by scythe, wilted in sunlight and breeze before being transported along a steep hillside by horse-drawn sled.

Alf met a kind-hearted people. "They say that a spectator sees most of the game and I – as a young Glaswegian – was looking at them purely from the outside. I remember chatting to a man aged about 60. Just over the fell-top, some five miles away, as the crow flies, was some marvellous countryside.

"He had never been there. He lived in his own little dale and went into Leyburn on market day. That was it."

The dales that lay between tracts of moorland teemed with rich characters. Alf observed: "The higher up the dale you went, the more unique and nicer was the type of person you met... I was lucky. Farms were so isolated the people loved to see somebody from the outside world. "The families were generally large. After I had done the tuberculin 'test' they would say: 'Come in and have a bit o'dinner.'

"This was the great saying; they were so hospitable. Before the agricultural reps were going around, and there were regular visitors, everyone would 'down tools' and sit around and look at me."

Entering the kitchen, Alf would see a low, brown, earthenware sink, which was almost literally back-breaking to use. Huge sides of fat bacon hung from hooks driven into the ceiling. "You had to duck your head to avoid brushing against them. Bacon was what they lived on. Every time you went into a kitchen there was this lovely smell of bacon being cooked. But it was nearly all fat. And I can't eat fat."

In the living kitchen, the fireplace was part of a wrought-iron range incorporating oven and wash-boiler. "There'd be a reckon they pulled out and hung the kettle on.

"They made some wonderful Yorkshire puddings. I remember that."

An edited extract from Herriot: A Vet's Life by WR Mitchell, Great Northern Books, 15.99, ISBN: 9781905080779. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepost bookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing

is 2.75.

YP MAG 4/9/10