When I first landed in Fairburn, age 7, it seemed like
the middle of nowhere. Light years away from my
old family home in Castleford, down a winding
country lane that had no streetlights and no speed
limit. As it turns out, it’s only a couple of miles away,
but back then it might as well have been another
country. It was, at least, another county. Or at least,
it was supposed to be. Everyone told me Fairburn
was in North Yorkshire, as opposed to West
Yorkshire, where I’d always lived, and the Wikipedia
page will tell you no different. But since the nearest
town was Castleford, itself in West Yorkshire, it has a
West Yorkshire postcode: WF11, part of the
Wakefield postcode area. Which all makes sense
until you realise the postcode for Castleford is
WF10, and WF11 is the postcode for Knottingley,
which is slightly further away.
MY ADDRESS (from Sept 1979 to Feb 1982)
2 School Terrace
Fairburn
near Knottingley (not Castleford, which is closer)
West Yorkshire
WF11 9JX
School Terrace is a small row of three-storey houses
at the top end of Gauk Street, where it meets the
Great North Road. So-called because it overlooks
the school (see below). My bedroom was in the attic
right at the top of the house. My favourite colour
was red, so we painted the walls bright red (or
rather bright reddish-orange - the exact shade was
poppy). I also had a pair of bunk beds all to myself,
which was pretty cool. Not because I liked having
people to stay - I didn’t. I just liked sleeping higher
up.
LOCAL AMENITIES AND ATTRACTIONS
(1979 - 82)
•
FAIRBURN INGS - a protected bird sanctuary
and wetland nature reserve, just outside
Fairburn. Down a windy country road that
didn’t have a pavement, so we rarely went.
And yes, as it turns out, ‘ing’ is actually a real
word, which means pasture or water
meadow, or a marsh which floods
•
WILDGOOSE GALLERY - purveyor of fine art,
fine giftware and bespoke framing. Also very
angry about the parking situation
•
ST JAMES’ CHURCH - a 19th century C of E
church with a long history, and a graveyard
which houses a war monument and the
remains of prominent past Fairburnians.
The vicar back then (who I think was called
Ernest but I can’t be sure) ran a Christian
youth club called the 7-11 Club, which I
often went to
•
A CRICKET FIELD - with goalposts, just in
case, a set of swings (built on concrete - I
once spectacularly fell off one and landed
on my face) and a large-ish building we used
as a community centre, for discos and other
exciting village events
•
A FARM OR TWO - one of them used to be
called Swales Farm but it looks like now
maybe it’s called Bay Horse Farm Limited. I
have no reliable memory of what they
farmed, but it might have been horses. Or
hay. I don’t know much about farms
•
A COUPLE OF GARAGES - you know, for
fixing your car and that. Actually, it might
just have been one garage
•
A POST OFFICE - which also sold sweets, if I
remember right. But not comics. You had to
go to a completely different town for that
•
Not one, not two, but THREE PUBS, all
horse-themed - The Three Horse Shoes and
the Waggon and Horses, which are still open
today. And The Bay Horse, visible from the
A1 and therefore probably the busiest for
passing trade. Sadly this was bulldozed
many years ago. The Waggon and Horses
was the one most of the locals went to, and
the only one I ever went inside (mainly
because it was run by my mate Jason’s
grandparents)
•
A SCHOOL - see below
FAIRBURN COUNTY PRIMARY SCHOOL (now
Fairburn Community Primary School) was a small
Victorian building with two classrooms, a dining
room, an assembly hall and that’s it. There were
probably only about 40 or 50 pupils in the entire
school, from the ages of 4 to 11. Three years’ worth
of infants (ages 4 to 7, which these days would be
called Reception and Years 1 & 2) and four of juniors
(ages 7 to 11, or Years 3 to 6).
My class teacher (and the school’s headmaster) was
called Mr Geraghty. I wish I remembered his first
name, because he’s so important to this story, but I
can’t. It might have been Stephen. He was an
affable, middle-aged guy with slightly greying hair.
Engaging, funny, but also deadly serious when he
needed to be, and not afraid to clip you round the
ear if you didn’t stop talking when he asked you to
(these were the days when that sort of thing was
still pretty much expected, even from progressive
teachers). I remember him in corduroy jackets and
muted, earthy colours, but I don’t know if that’s
because I’ve been watching too many gritty
documentaries about British education in the
1970s.
I remember the name of the infants teacher - Joan
Cunniff. Miss. Twenty-something with long, straight,
dark hair. Slightly hippyish, dressed in dark greens
and browns, like a forest. Softly spoken, projected a
sense of warmth and kindness - the kind of person
you wished was your Mum. These teachers were
basically just nice people who loved teaching kids.
It all sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? This tiny little
Yorkshire village with its quaint horse-named pubs
and its lovely little school. That’s probably because I
forgot to mention the A1 running right through the
middle of it.
THE SCHOOL
THE VILLAGE
THE A1
If I remember the history correctly, Fairburn started
life as a waypoint along the Great North Road,
somewhere to rest overnight while taking the
journey up the east side of England from London to
Scotland. Hence the preponderance of pubs named
after horses and carts. The A1, since its designation
in the 1920s, followed the same route, and as a
result went right through the middle of Fairburn.
And as the traffic increased, and sections of the
road got repurposed as motorways, that went right
through the middle of the village too.
School Terrace was right next to the A1. The vehicle
noise must have been constant, but I don’t
remember it ever being a problem. Except that, as
an adult, I find it impossible to sleep in places that
don’t have the sound of motorway traffic constantly
swishing away in the background. I do think it might
have been a problem for other residents though.
There was a sense that the village had somehow
been ‘divided’ - with Old Fairburn on one side of the
A1 and the more modern Fairfield housing estate on
the other.
The only way to cross on foot was a single
footbridge, just south of the school. I don’t have that
many photographs from the period, but in this one,
taken at the door of our house facing into the back
yard, you can just about see the (washed out)
footbridge in the background:
Since we left in 1982, I’ve only ever been back to
Fairburn once. In 2007, twenty-five years after
leaving, I took my wife there to show her this place I
kept raving about. To my horror, it had mutated. At
some point, the A1 had been diverted along a new
bypass and no longer went through the village.
Which made it harder to get there and utterly
changed the character of the place. The road in the
middle was still there - except it was the A1246 now,
not the A1 - and it didn’t have the same amount of
traffic. Admittedly it was just after Christmas, but the
whole place just felt dead. There was a plaque
outside the school excitedly commemorating the
‘reunification of the village’ but it still seemed
divided to me, with this great big road space in the
middle that wasn’t even being used as a road any
more.
We went in the Waggon and Horses - a truly
American Werewolf in London scenario where a
packed pub of villagers turned and stared at us
warily as we walked in - until I explained I used to
live there as a kid and started talking about how
much it had changed. We still smoked back then, so
we had a few cigarettes outside with a few of the
regulars, some of whom had lived there all their
lives, and I got the impression that they felt
abandoned in some way. Like the world used to
come through Fairburn every day - sometimes it
used to stay for a while - but now it went
somewhere else and it might never come their way
again.
Whether it was better then or better now, I can’t tell
you. I only know the place felt very different when I
lived there, and I can never go back.
FAIRBURN
September 1979 - February 1982
FAIRBURN ONLINE
Fairburn Ings
“An exciting site for
serious wildlife
watching”
Fairburn School
“We aim to create an
environment where our
children love to learn”
Fairburn on Wikipedia
“A small village and civil
parish in the Selby
district”
Ledsham Parish
Church of England
Diocese of York
Wildgoose Gallery
“Fine Art, Fine Giftware,
Bespoke Framing”
Fairburn on Facebook
Posts about Fairburn,
North Yorkshire
Pictures of Fairburn
in the county of North
Yorkshire
Waggon & Horses
Real Ales Available
The Three Horse
Shoes
“known for its fun and
happening events”
FAIRBURN MEMORIES
ENGLISH 1
A few tentative steps
into a world of terrible
writing
Darth Vader
An autograph from a
genuine stand-in
WAEN SHEPHERD
Who was this strange
little boy?
OTHER DELIGHTS
BLONDIE!
Pictures of Little Waen’s
lovely blonde hair
TERM 1
A day-by-day account of
Waen’s first term at
Fairburn School
TERM 2
The birth of the 1980s -
Blake’s 7, Blondie and
battles in space
The Fugitive
A man runs - but who is
he? And what is he
running from?
The Flame in the
Desert
An evil fire threatens
the safety of the world
Apeth
Badly-spelt high-jinks
with a purple gorilla
from outer space!
Captain Carnivore
Gary Shepherd is
hunted down by a
deadly flying meteor