Army heritage runs deep through North Yorkshire and it’s something we should preserve - Carl Les
Even though I`ve never served in the Armed Forces, not even in the cadets at school, like many people in North Yorkshire I’ve had a connection with the military all my life. And most connections are by happenstance, events that occur by coincidence.
It started in Leeming village where my family settled after the Second World War. By then my father, a refugee from the time Germany had invaded Poland, an early prisoner of war who escaped from the Nazis, travelled through Europe to Britain, fought in the liberation of Europe, but did not want to return to his home country, already under the control of the Soviet Union.
He had met and married my English mother, and they were talking about relocating to Canada, as every Polish soldier attached to the Canadian 1st Army at D-Day was guaranteed Canadian citizenship.
Indeed he was classed as a deserter and unable to visit Poland without fear of arrest until 1968 when a more enlightened regime repealed that classification, realising that many ex-pat Poles had also not returned but wanted to visit their homeland.
My grandparents had a small hotel in Bamburgh, but moved in 1946 to the iconic Cow and Calf Hotel on Ilkley Moor. They maintained business connections in Newcastle, and on the day my grandmother was going to visit the accountants, as she passed through Leeming village she came across a man hanging a ‘for sale’ sign on the wall of his café. This was Jock, of Jock’s Café, who had run a successful operation during the war serving egg and chip suppers to the hundreds of airmen based at Royal Air Force Leeming.
After the war he decided to retire, sell his business and go home to Scotland. My grandmother never went to Newcastle that day, she turned the car around and went straight back to Ilkley to persuade my parents to buy this small café, on the side of the A1, the Great North Road.
This they did, renamed it Leeming Café and it became a very successful business, adding a dining room, bakery and shop during the 1950s. I was brought up there, mixing with local kids and also the children of serving airmen at Leeming. Some lived in the village, others in the married quarters at Gatenby.
There were no high security fences in those days. We could visit by walking down to Londonderry, down the lane next to Lawsons’ Transport Café, and across the runway as long as the red traffic light wasn’t showing.Indeed we often took our sandwiches and sat beside the runway watching the planes take off. Occasionally the RAF Police would come and shoo us away, sometimes they even gave us a lift home.
In 1959 a bypass around the three villages of Leeming Bar, Leeming, and Londonderry was announced, and we relocated Leeming Café to a new site on the bypass, opening a café, restaurant, shop and 12 bedroom motel. Over the years this grew to become Leeming Bar Services.
The motel still kept business links with RAF Leeming. We employed members of RAF families, and provided accommodation to visiting personnel, notably the Red Arrows and the Alabama National Guard. Each visiting aircrew were asked to provide a signed photograph of their aircraft to join many others on the reception wall.
My connection with the Army came later when I was first elected to represent Catterick for North Yorkshire County Council. The vast army base and its workings were unknown and quite confusing to me. By chance the Garrison Commander, the late Brigadier Donaldson, and I had children at the same school so we frequently met in the car park. In conversation it became clear that the world of local government was equally confusing. So we started a series of informal meetings which led to a more formal structure that we have today. I’ve had the privilege to work with over a dozen Commanding Officers, all from different regiments with different, fascinating stories to tell. All men so far, but I suppose that might change in due course.
The first garrison commander was Baden-Powell, more famous perhaps for starting the Scouts movement then establishing Catterick Camp in 1914. The council and the Army work well together including in social care matters. The first time I met with the Chief Executive of the Army Welfare Service, his office was formerly Baden-Powell’s bedroom.
The garrison has grown and will continue to do so. A ‘town’ without a town centre, the retail side of this was addressed with the opening of Prince’s Gate. Now the Council is supporting the £20m development of a community-based central area, paid for by the Levelling Up Fund. Elsewhere medical needs will be addressed by the Catterick Integrated Care Campus, a joint military/ civilian project, the largest NHS project in Yorkshire.
That’s the future. We must also remember the past. At this week`s Council meeting we discussed the redevelopment of Ripon Barracks (without compromising the impartiality of the planning committee), and the need for the developers to take full account of the barracks heritage.
Carl Les is the leader of North Yorkshire Council.