The current five member production team on Settle & District Community News introduce themselves.
I generally enjoy writing, though not about myself. However, I will put those reservations to one side and endeavour to provide you with a potted history of who I am and how I came to be here, writing this, as your new editor of Settle and District Community News.
I was born in Bradford in 1966 and was raised and lived in the same city until 2022, when I made the move to Settle, which I am now very happy to call home and where I run my own technical support business.
I left school at 16 with a bunch of O-Levels and a burning desire to become an industrial chemist. My first job was at a chemical factory called Allied Colloids, just over the road from where I lived in the Low Moor area of Bradford.
After two years of working in the labs, testing the products for quality as they came off the production line, the burning desire was extinguished and I moved behind a desk in the Civil Service, working as a tax man. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it; please don’t all boo at once!
On the plus side, I met people there who would turn out to be lifelong friends, one of whom, in a strange twist of fate, would eventually persuade me many years later to move to Settle.
After eight years I’d had enough of the Inland Revenue and quit to visit Australia with an open-ended ticket, imagining I might stay there for good. However, I got homesick after three months and returned to Old Blighty. I discovered that I am no Crocodile Dundee. I do still enjoy travelling to some weird and wonderful places on holiday, but I like to come home. Even more so now my home is here in the Yorkshire Dales.
I worked at BT for a while after coming back from Australia, before I eventually settled (no pun intended) into a job I stuck at for a little longer than usual, over twenty years this time, working as a journalist amongst other things for a company called League Publications Ltd in Brighouse, West Yorkshire.
If you follow the sport of rugby league, as I do, you may know them as publishers of a weekly newspaper called League Express, and a monthly magazine called Rugby League World. I’ve done a couple of stints as editor on the latter, which is where I learned the skills that will hopefully help me do an acceptable job as the new editor of Settle and District Community News, but I will leave you, the readers, to be the ultimate judges of that.
I’m looking forward to providing an interesting and engaging platform, in print and online, for you to tell your stories, promote your activities and keep in touch what’s happening in our community.
John Drake
Hello; I’m the southron, the sassenach, the off-comed ‘un, who has joined the revised management line-up for Settle Community News. Being a retired railway engineer I am delighted to have the occasional steam train literally at the bottom of the garden, but the main reason for moving up from the Deep South was to be closer to family now living in Yorkshire and in Scotland.
We were 38 years in darkest Sussex (historically, the last pagan district in England), though my ancestral roots, despite a London upbringing, are in Devon, Dorset and Cornwall. Now we are slowly learning the Settle language; twittens have become ginnels and the combes are all dales. A big source of confusion comes with the baked goods; tea cakes are no longer those glutinous Tunnocks creations or something you might get toasted in Betty’s, but what I would have just called a good honest bread roll. In Derby where my wife is from, one would ask for a cob, but here you might end up getting a farmhouse loaf instead. And yet just over the hill in Preston they call them barms; if my Cornish grandma were here she’d be asking for tuffs.
I was pleased to be ‘set on’ by the Community News team, having helped produce the local magazine in our old home parish. I think printed media still have an important role to play, especially as an expression of community in rural towns and villages. And the challenges of keeping that local spirit going are similar up and down the country – we must find ways of encouraging the forty and fifty-somethings to get involved so that we can keep momentum going when we older folk run low on energy or ideas!
Six months in and we’re very much pleased to have chosen Settle as our new home. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit to a few things we miss about Sussex; walking the leafy byways of England’s most wooded county, and rambling along the Downs within sight of the sea, but to be able to hike-up a real mountain (Penyghent) and back direct from my own front door seems a real treat, and Craven limestone is often drier underfoot than Wealden clay! One thing hasn’t changed with our move – the bleating of sheep outside the bedroom window, for we have merely swopped Southdowns for Swaledales.
On the cultural front we have already taken good advantage of the offerings at the Victoria Hall. As we saw at the Community Carol Concert in Settle church, there is an impressive range of talent in the area, and I hope any literary side to those skills will be directed in your contributions to this magazine.
Phillip Hinde
I am looking forward to working with the new team on Settle Community News. I hope that we will be able to keep up the fine work of the outgoing editorial group, creating a regular and lively publication that allows residents to share their interests and experiences of living in this fascinating area. I hope too that we can engage more people and tell more stories about the folks who live around here through a magazine that is truly part of the community.
I have had a life-long interest in local news. As a schoolboy growing up in the East Riding, I occasionally contributed to the Beverley Guardian and sent in one or two letters to the Yorkshire Post. At university in Liverpool I briefly edited the student newspaper, Guild Gazette. I then went on to serve my journalism apprenticeship as a reporter on the Darlington Evening Despatch. I spent most of my career in London working at the TUC, initially in the press office and then in the general secretary’s office, where, among other jobs, I produced a newsletter for staff.
Since moving to Settle ten years ago I have helped support the swimming pool, first through the paper recycling scheme and now by working in the charity shop and acting as a pool trustee. I am also a keen member of Austwick Tennis Club and help with the Gallery on the Green, which as those who set it up shortly before our arrival here, say is ‘probably the world’s smallest art gallery’.
Mike Smith
I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the production and distribution of Settle Community News for the coming months and years.
I started coming to the Dales over 40 years ago for walking and leading school expeditions, and to Settle over 20 years ago for summer holidays with my husband, and two, then very small, children. We loved visiting: enjoying all the natural wonders that Ribblesdale and the Settle area have to offer. Whenever we visited, I would look out for the latest copy of Settle Community News and read it from first to last page, absorbing the reported activities and musings of the community. The magazine introduced us further to the human, historic and social wonders and goings on of the area too. My mother, who grew up in Batley, has long family roots in the textile industry of West Yorkshire, and I treasure my family links to Yorkshire strongly.
Eight years ago we were fortunate to buy The Tannery on the Green in Settle from Alan and Celia King. This has set up Gavin and myself, with occasional visits from our now grown up children, to be in Settle much more. We feel privileged to be able to be here, still enjoying all those wonders and the everyday living in this community.
I have professionally worked in education during almost all my adult life: as a teacher and headteacher, then for local government. I continue my interest in education as a school governor and trustee. I am really keen to get some of the children from the schools in the area writing for the magazine too: do look out for more information on this.
I am also keen, as my retirement gets under way, to spend more time walking (including with our new puppy, Finn), gardening and watching or participating in sport. Cricket is a particular family passion and I look forward to increasing the regularity of my visits to Settle matches and to Headingley. I enjoy running and have joined in the Austwick Amble and a couple of Settle Loop fell running events.
I have no particular writing skills but hope to be able to help with some of the back office organisation of Settle Community News. I think it is a special thing that this community led and run magazine gets delivered to every household in the area: long may it continue
Annie Gammon
The new honorary treasurer is Paul Cochrane. Paul brings his experience as treasurer of both Settle Parish Church and ACE [Action on Climate Emergency], Settle and Area. He has already started work on moving the Community News’ accounts to an online service linked to the bank accounts. This will improve the detail and timeliness of the management reports required by the team to monitor finances.
