New chapter opens for pretty Dales village

Today a village’s lending library will be officially re-opened, one of the success stories in a year when the nation’s reading treasure houses are being shut or threatened by lack of cash.

In the Yorkshire Dales, Gargrave, at the foot of Malhamdale, stood up to the threat. Alan Simpson, chairman of the library support group says: “It was very difficult. It really was a struggle to keep it going.”

Behind his words lay tussles to get the library back on track. He does not want quoting. It’s in the past. “We had a good committee – very local – and the community spirit in the village and in Malhamdale was magnificent,” he says. The principal backers were the parish council which has guaranteed the £3,500 room rental for three years, plus support from the Village Hall, a charity which owns the library space.

Now renamed Gargrave and Malhamdale Community Library, it opens on four days a week, staffed by a group of 30 volunteers who include a former paid assistant librarian, Carole Ballard.

The newcomers were given induction courses by professional librarians. A DIY electronic scanner checks books in and out, issuing a receipt showing the title and the date due back. It accepts cash for fines due for late return – and will refuse a loan if the borrower’s account is in debt. That’s progress for you.

A mail drop to every house and business brought in around £5,000. Craven District Council made a grant of £1,000. The Women’s Institute national project is supporting libraries and the local members raised more than £700 at a coffee morning. There was also “one very good” donation from a local anonymous business.

The library was dark for just six weeks. The county library service will continue rotation and renewal of books, film and audio CDs as before.

Gargrave is split by the youthful River Aire which rises in Malhamdale. On its banks are snowdrops in January and daffodils in April. House prices are high and it still supports three public houses (one with a large motel), four antique shops, two lovely cafés, a good Indian restaurant, a post office and a busy Co-op store. There is a pharmacy and a surgery, a coal merchant. A busy industrial/business estate includes bespoke photography, light industry, a tandem bicycle shop and a keep-fit gym.

The unmanned railway station is on the Leeds-Carlisle line. In the “yard” there is a metal fabrication works. The landscape is farmed. The parish church keeps getting its lead nicked.

The scenery is lovely. It is a bustling village, familiar to walkers on the Pennine Way, to pleasure craft on the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and drivers on the A65 which blasts through the centre.

Alan Simpson has lived here for 27 years. His long garden runs down to the river. In a quarter of a century he has seen the departure of a garage, a visiting men’s hairdresser, the bank, a general store, a bakery, a fish and chip shop – all are now houses.

The village butchery and adjoining fish and chip shop are closed. The newsagent is looking for a new purchaser.

A greengrocer is now a secondhand clothes shop selling classy labels. A church has become houses.

The demise of some of the above could be blamed on the Co-op, which sells meat and fish and veg and booze as well as newspapers and magazines – much to the chagrin of Geoff Minke at Gargrave News.

A florist remains as a beacon of things beautiful and in the same building there is a ladies hairdresser (men welcome) and a distributor of specialist plant propagation kits. The latest business to put its money into Gargrave is Stephen Davenport’s Troy Innovations of Rawtenstall, buying the long-established Dorothy Ward country shop. In July it will re-open as an IT-based contemporary furniture showroom while downstairs Stephen Davenport’s wife Jan, and their daughter Danielle, will have a hair and beauty salon.

However, a blow to a village which once had three garages is the closure on June 30 of the last. John and Maralyne Cadman are closing down their petrol station and workshop after 45 years.

It has been a hands-on job day-in, day-out. For much of the time John operated school bus services in the area but he lost the contract for this year. “My price was not right,” he says. The single-storey garage stocks firewood and drinks and sandwiches and the Craven Herald and sweets. Air for your tyres is 40p a go.

It is pricing which is closing the Cadmans’ garage and hundreds more in the country. Blame in part the supermarkets. In Skipton, four miles away, there are two. “Tesco knocked another 2p a litre off this morning,” says John, in smart blue and yellow overalls, at the start of our conversation.

That put the price of Tesco petrol at 136.9p a litre and diesel at 141.9p/litre – exactly the same as Morrisons next door. The Cadmans’ JC brand (actually Jet) is 146.9p and 149.9p respectively. They say it is better fuel.

Maralyne has not had a holiday for 12 years. John can’t remember his last one. The years have been taken up with their Mom and Pop garage, with help from their son Mick and daughters Sarah and Helen when they were younger – one now a milk tanker driver, the other a care worker.

Their gross margin on fuel is 6p a litre, the same as it was when it was selling at 80p a litre. In the last four years the daily sale has dropped to 200/300 gallons of petrol and 400 of diesel from 500 and 600 respectively. “We will end up in a situation where there are no filling stations on main roads,” John predicts.

On the busy A65/A59 from Ingleton to Harrogate, nearly 50 miles, the Cadmans’ Lyndale Garage is now the only roadside petrol station without going into Settle or Skipton.

The Cadmans were advised to sell the site for housing. There will be five along the frontage and a larger house at the back for their son who operates a printing business.

One thing villagers will miss is the free shuttle service John Cadman operated to the village’s famous agricultural show every August.

Totting it all up, Gargrave is surviving fairly well. Its support for the library – and the maintenance of the public lavatories – denote village spirit.

John Baker and Nicola Dewsbury are glad they settled here. They took a 20-year lease on the popular Masons Arms, moved last August Bank Holiday and were quickly beset with the unforeseen in week one. The kitchen floor collapsed, the heating packed in and they had to fit a new chiller for the beer cellar. The first month’s electricity bill was £1,100. In the first three months they spent £15,000 on repairs and upgrades.

Fortunately John had kept on his job as a warehouse manager at Trafford Park. Now they are both full-time, working from 7am when they are up to cook breakfast for their B&B, until one in the morning.

They employ seven part-time staff but reckon they each work a hundred hours a week.

“It is tiring,” says Nicola but both like the village, their customers and their choice.

John grins: “It seems daft, but we are really enjoying it”.

Gargrave and Malhamdale Community Library will be officially opened at 10.30am today by the chairmen of the village hall committee and the parish council.