The magic of a domestic tool

Some people called them beezums, while others preferred the alternative pronunciation of bezzums, but these were handmade brooms with long handles tipped with twigs instead of bristles.

Perhaps a modern image is that of a witch's broomstick. There is no doubt that the popular film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone helped to remind people of these distinctive and very useful domestic utensils.

Even if it is not possible to sit aboard them and fly off to wonderful places in the manner of fictional witches, they can be used for their original purpose - sweeping away the more difficult residue which features in our daily lives.

They are very good for removing autumn leaves from lawns, for example, or for sweeping straw and hay from the floors of cattle sheds, or coping with lumps of dried muck from around the outside of the house and cleaning thick dirt from filthy boots.

Other uses have included brushing cloth in dark Satanic mills or removing scum from molten metal in blast furnaces, but in these latter instances the besoms were specially adapted.

Those used in the cloth industry were miniature versions, while those used in furnaces did not have long handles, but could generally be used no more than twice. Quite literally, they were burnt away.

So how does a besom differ from a conventional broom? The answer lies in the bristles.

On besoms, they are usually made from ling (heather), although birch twigs or even broom can be used.

Broom was once very popular for this purpose in some areas, hence the name of broom for a sweeping brush.

With incredible ingenuity and a useful tool called a nipper, which clamped the ends of the twigs into a tight bunch, they were trimmed at the top to make them even, then securely bound with long lappings.

These were pieces of very slender, strong and pliable ash wood - up to seven lappings could be used on besoms designed for general farm use. The long wooden handle was then forced into the twigs, making a very secure fit.

There was one further asset with a besom - when its useful days were over, it could be put on the fire to provide light and heat!

Besom-making was, and still is, a craft which requires a high degree of expertise, but around the moors and dales there were many besom-makers well into the Thirties.

In my own North Yorkshire moorland village when I was a child, there was a family of besom-makers called Scarth, but perhaps the biggest centre for their manufacture was around Pickering.

Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, in their Life in the Moorlands of North-East Yorkshire, tell of John Hall, who lived at Hartoft above Rosedale.

During the First World War, he made besoms and took them to Pickering by horse and cart, selling them for 11d a dozen. That is less than one old penny each - and he brought up ten children on his smallholding.

The craft continues in the Pickering area. Brian Eddon, whose workshop is at Farwath beside the North York Moors railway line, continues to make besoms in the traditional manner.

Mr Eddon is one craftsman who has benefited from the Harry Potter phenomenon and his family name crops up among those of earlier besom-makers.

The besom was regarded as an essential tool around the rural household. Long before carpets, the dirt-laden floors had to be swept efficiently and the besom was ideal.

Indeed, it came to be regarded as the symbol of the housewife. If a woman was away from the house, she would stand a besom outside the door, and some would thrust a besom up the chimney so that its twigs showed out of the top - a long-distance signal of her temporary absence.

Just how the besom came to be associated with flying witches is not certain, although it was once a very common belief.

A witch was said to anoint her body with a special salve given by the Devil and this enabled her to fly on a broomstick or a besom.

She was also said to use other sticks, such as those from a broom plant or even a ragwort stem, and it was widely believed witches used broomsticks as their means of transport to Sabbats.

Not surprisingly, other superstitions were associated with besoms. If it was said that a woman had jumped over a besom, it meant she had given birth to an illegitimate child, and it was also believed that if a girl accidentally stepped over a broomstick, she would become a mother before she was married.

Such a girl was sometimes called a besom and to refer to any woman as a besom was therefore an insult.

There was also a superstition that it was unlucky to make besoms during the month of May, or during the 12 days of Christmas.

My notes about the mysterious Bedale Castle have produced an interesting letter from a correspondent who lives in that town.

She lives not far away from Bedale Hall and tells me that the ground near her home is riddled with cobbles of all sizes, including some fairly large stones.

One of the stones bears an image which looks very like a man's face, but she feels that most of the stones appear to have come from an ancient building.

For that reason, she asks if I have any more information about the supposed site of Bedale Castle.

The snag is that every trace of the castle has vanished and very little information about its history is available. My first reference suggested it was to the south west of the church, but in the grounds of Bedale Hall.

I have a map of Bedale dated 1772 which gives the names of those who lived along the main street at that time and the occupant of the hall is shown as Mr Pierse.

No initial or Christian name is given, but the outline of the grounds of the hall does not show any sign of the castle's presence.

Another reference tells me that the market cross, tollbooth, church and castle were all erected around the same time - during the thirteenth century - although this may not be totally true.

When the castle disappeared, its fate lingered in the folk memory of the local people and it was said that it had stood in Mr Pierse's garden, and that he had ploughed up the garden to make a lawn.

Another reference said the castle had stood on the site of Miss Pierse's lawn and I believe that work to build a wall around the lawn, many years ago, led to the discovery of what might have been the castle's foundations.

It seems the castle was somewhere within the hall grounds. It may be that evidence of the castle does survive somewhere beneath the grounds of Bedale Hall or, of course, its stones might have been removed to build other structures within the vicinity.

A Northallerton correspondent writes about the reported absence of starlings in some areas.

He expresses his astonishment at this news because, every evening, thousands of starlings come from north and south to gather over the grounds of Northallerton College.

In huge numbers, they swoop and dive for about 15 minutes and then, as the light fades, they head for the trees.

At the time of writing, this display had been occurring for the past two weeks, sometimes against brilliantly spectacular winter sunsets.

He tells me it has been a joy to watch these birds against such a wonderful background.

Perhaps this nightly presence of so many starlings in Northallerton explains their absence from other places?

It will be interesting to see what the RSPB garden bird watch reveals about their numbers.

Speaking of dramatic sunsets, there is the lovely story of a visitor to a Dales village who witnessed such a display.

"What a wonderful sunset!" he exclaimed to a local character. "Aye, it's not bad for a small spot like this," replied the proud local