Yorkshire crafts and craftspeople
The David Morgan Rees collection
at Sheffield Hallam University

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Extract from a Journal article by David

Wood work

Dales brewery cooper
Gatemaker
Shepherd's crook maker
Wheelwright

Dales brewery cooper

The cooper is one of the most highly skilled craftsmen in wood. While cabinet-makers and joiners work precisely to written measurements and drawings, the cooper by his skill, his sense of shape and form, will produce an article perfectly fitted for the job it has to do.

	The skill of the cooper lies in chiefly in making the staves. A cask is made from a number of staves or sections of wood, enclosing a circular head at either end and bound together with steel hops. Each stave has to be carefully shaped and bevelled with edges that are cut with the exact angle to form the tight-fitting circle of the belly of the cask
	Clive Hollis, cooper at Theakston's brewery, Masham, astride an old long jointer plane once used to shape the staves or sections of a wooden barrel before the introduction of powered machinery.
	The 'chimb' or cap hoop is positioned with a 'driver', a flat steel wedge

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Gatemaker

John Harding, champion gate maker and winner of many prizes at Yorkshire shows. A well made gate in good quality timber and kept in good order is ultimately an economy and capable of saving time and temper.

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Shepherd's crook maker

In the old days it was custom for farmers' sons to search the hedgerows for suitable material for making walking sticks, thumb ticks and Shepherds' crooks. Most country folk have developed this side-line into a profitable hobby by taking it to a fine craft.

Fred Bentley of Gillamore, North Yorkshire with a variety of shepherd's crooks, walking sticks and thumb sticks which have been exhibited and sold at agricultural shows in the area.

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Wheelwright

Generations of knowledge and custom evolved a basic design for wagons and carts that worked with simplicity and was capable of continual repair and renewal as parts wore out. In the larger villages farm carts and wagons were built by teams of craftsmen, but in many of the small Yorkshire villages it was more likely to be the village carpenter who would build the body and make the wheels himself.

	Cyril Sissons with a demonstration model to show how a wagon wheel is constructed with a central 'naff' or hub of elm, spokes of oak and felloes of ash.
	Percy Sissons with an East Yorkshire farm wagon made by the Sissons family at Beswick around 1890
	Percy Sissons, in his eighties. A man of many wheels - and wagons.

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