IF last week’s Memories had been printed more than 100,000 years ago, it would have been factually correct in saying that the River Swale flowed through the North Yorkshire village of Muker.

Because back then, the Swale went around the west of a large hill that we call Kisdon. This took it through Muker and down the dale to Gunnerside, Reeth and Richmond.

However, the Ice Age came, and a glacier formed. When it melted, it dropped a moraine – a collection of rocky debris – into the valley which blocked the western path of the Swale.

So the river burst around the east of Kisdon, and then on down the dale to Gunnerside, Reeth and Richmond – but by-passing Muker.

As last week’s Memories was a post-glacial publication, it would have been correct to say that Straw Beck now flows through Muker and joins the Swale about a quarter of a mile away.

Vera Hunter of Redmire was one of those who pointed out the error.

“A lot of people think it is the Swale which runs through Muker,” she says. “In your picture, I was born in the house with the milk churn outside.

“When I was young, there were about six small farms in Muker and they each milked five or six cows, producing up to ten gallons of milk, which is what one of those churns held.”

But then the dairy entered the tanker age, and it wasn’t economic to send a giant vehicle to collect ten gallons. The farmers concentrated on sheep and, as the men died, the farms were amalgamated.

“Now there are just one or two large farms in the dale,” says Vera.

“It is a shame really, but a small farm can’t make a living these days.”

AST week’s archive look at the timeless beauty of Swaledale inspired Mr GH Grieveson of Richmond to send in this picture of himself as a lad at Gunnerside in the winter of 1947.

He was working as an assistant to the driver of Moores Stores mobile shop which took groceries up the dale from Richmond.

“The travelling shop was a converted ex-Army desert ambulance with canvas sides and canvas rollback cab doors,” he says. “It was very chilly in wintertime.”

Wednesday was the Swaledale run.

“Some people still wore wooden clogs,” he remembers, “and milk cans were still carried in a harness on someone’s back during milking time. In springtime, the meadowlands bloomed, and the Swaledale route was largely traffic free.

The Northern Echo:
Mr GH Grieveson as a young boy with Moores mobile shop, of Richmond, at Gunnerside Lodge, in March 1947. The Earl Peel’s gamekeeper, Boylan, is on the left

“In fact, during the snowbound February of 1947, it was completely traffic free – the RAF had to airdrop supplies to the dalesfolk.”

It wasn’t until the end of March that the mobile shop was on the move again.

“The road surface was hard packed snow, and on either side of us were walls of snow,” he says.

“Our first visit for weeks to Gunnerside Lodge was photographed to mark the occasion by the driver, Ron Moxon.”