Scenes from a lost era (From York Press)

Scenes from a lost era in Huntington

11:54am Monday 28th May 2012 in History articles By Stephen Lewis

THREE years ago, Huntington resident Colin Carr wrote a fascinating local history of his home village. Called, with elegant simplicity, Huntington Revisited, it was a mixture of personal reminiscences, research, and a wealth of wonderful old photographs.

Three years on, Mr Carr has revised and updated his book, adding several new pages of text and a number of “new” old photographs, including the ones on these pages.

The Life Boys, Mr Carr writes, were the junior section of the Boys Brigade, and members of the Methodist Church.

A highlight for these children in the 1920s was the Easter Picnic. “Everyone would meet at the village pond (where the doctor’s surgery is now...) then walk up North Lane to Crompton Woods,” Mr Carr writes.

“Miss Magson (Eva Magson, second left in our main photograph) led the Easter Monday mystery tour for pupils on bicycles, which went further away to places such as Kirkham Abbey.”

Huntington was less a suburb of York and more a village in its own right in the 1920s. Transport between York and Strensall was provided by the motor carrier service which ran a bus.

“There were no official bus stops,” Mr Carr notes. “Passengers holding out their hand would be picked up anywhere along the route.”

The bridge over the River Foss Mr Carr remembers himself from the 1950s.

“It always had water beneath it containing newts, minnows and red throats. It was a popular spot for New Earswick people. My mother took me there in summer several times.”

The bridge is no longer there. “When I visited this location some years ago, I was disappointed to find it had been covered over to form the flood bank,” Mr Carr writes.

“But the bricks at the top of the bridge are still to be seen on the towpath.”

There are a number of photographs of long-vanished Huntington houses in Mr Carr’s book. They include Field View where, in the early 1900s, the carter, coal and coke merchant Ambrose Todd lived with his family – he kept his horse and cart in the outbuildings behind Bullocks Farm.

Field View itself was knocked down in the 1960s, Mr Carr recollects.

And then there was the row of four thatched cottages collectively known as The Hut. These were on the corner opposite what is now the Huntington Road end of New Lane.

We don’t know who the two elegantly-dressed young women in the photograph are, but by their clothes we’d judge the photograph to have been taken possibly in the very early 1900s.

• The revised edition of Huntington Revisited by Colin Carr is printed by York Publishing Services. It is available, priced £8, from Huntington Post Office, the Kards shop in Brockfield, Huntington, or from the author at colincarr@talktalk.net

The long-vanished house known as Field View, the home of carter, coal and coke merchant Ambrose Todd