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The Editor Meets...
David Hey
By Frank A Wilson
 This was not quite like meeting up with myself but there are a number of similarities. We are both Yorkshire lads from a rural background. We went to local West Riding Grammar Schools – David to Penistone and me to Ecclesfield a few (but not many) years later. We were the first members of our respective families to go to university and eventually we both had academic careers. However, David has a Penistone accent whereas mine is perhaps a mixture of Sheffield and the Derbyshire fringe.
David spent his early years in a cottage at Catshaw, in effect part of the old farm settlement to the west of Penistone not far from Millhouse Green and Bullhouse. It was an ideal place for someone who developed an interest in local history from an early age. Perhaps an awareness that even in the 1940’s he was living in a way that was in many respects little changed from at least half a century ago, stimulated his interest and developed a scholarly inquisitiveness about the past. As was the case at the farm where I was brought up, the house had no electricity until the early 1950’s and, as he puts it in the first chapter of his recent history of the Penistone district, “our light came from paraffin lamp and candles ….and our toilet was a privy midden”. All this and stone flagged floors, open fires and a water boiler next to the range, pegged rugs and ineffective sash windows all sound very familiar.
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David’s family moved into Penistone in 1949 just about right to start in at the grammar school and to come under the benevolent care of headmaster EF Bowman. Up to that time difficult as it may be to accept these days, his contact with the town had been limited to occasional visits to the cinema (or the Pictures as we always called it). With relatives all around and junior school not far away and plenty to do not far from home there was limited contact with the big world outside. Some of us lived very self-sufficient young lives in those days. For David it was school in the week, Sunday school at Bullhouse chapel, friends nearby and plenty of things going on at nearby farms. There was always lots to do and someone to do it with.
After reading History at University, David’s interest in local history was stimulated further at his teaching practice in Market Drayton before taking up a position at Ecclesfield Secondary Modern School. His first published work of any length was his The Village of Ecclesfield (1968) based on the thesis he submitted for his part time MA at the University of Leicester. At Leicester he was fortunate to be supervised and mentored by William (WG) Hoskins – a major figure in local history writing especially renowned for his The Making of the English Landscape first published in 1954. After four years at Ecclesfield and two at Holmfirth Secondary School he took up a post of Lecturer in History at Matlock College of Education. By this time he had already become heavily involved in WEA classes and enjoyed the special opportunities presented by a burgeoning Adult Education movement.
Not a man to be easily impressed and always confident of his own opinion, it is significant that Professor Hoskins took a liking to the young local historian from Yorkshire. His MA thesis having been awarded with a distinction it was perhaps not too surprising that Hoskins encouraged David into further academic study. A research fellowship in agrarian history at Leicester enabled him to develop his career over four years at the end of which he successfully completed his PhD on the history of a parish in Shropshire. In 1973 he returned to live nearer to his roots when he had the opportunity to join the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in Local History in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies.
This gave David the opportunity to develop extramural local history programmes as well as to write. He has indeed been able to write in such a way as to combine output that more than satisfied academic requirements and made a substantial contribution to scholarship with work that has attracted the interested lay person. Through his adult classes and local history writing he has been directly instrumental in stimulating and building interest in local history and in developing an understanding of the historical landscape and environmental context within which we currently live. This is no mean achievement. History, even local history can be a dry old subject but David’s writing helps to bring it alive.
David had built up a well-earned academic reputation by the time he took early retirement from the University of Sheffield at the age of sixty. This is marked by the fact that he remains Emeritus Professor of Local and Family History – no small honour in itself as the title “emeritus” is not lightly given. Early retirement appears to have simply meant that David has more time for writing – although he admits to having the odd day off now and then. His recent published work includes the following:
• A History of Sheffield (Carnegie 1998)
• Family Names and Family History (Hambledon and London 2000)
• Packmen, Carriers and Packhorse Roads (Landmark new edition 2001)
• How our Ancestors Lived: a history of life a hundred years ago (Public Record Office 2002)
• Historic Hallamshire (Landmark 2002)
• plus Revisions of the Oxford Guide to Family History and the Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford University Press)
David’s “Journeys in Family History” recently published by the National Archives at Kew marks his interest in and contribution to the fascinating area of family history. As his History of Penistone and District (Wharncliffe Books 2002) shows in his own case, local historians painting on a wider canvas have gained much from tracing the threads of individual families. After all, we all have a personal history that reflects the social, cultural and economic realities of times past.
His most recent work is his largest published project to date. His Carnegie published “A History of Yorkshire” is out and in the shops before Christmas. Extending to 140,000 words and drawing in part on earlier work, it is presented chronologically from the very earliest days when our landscapes and later settlement patterns were being formed. It is likely to be a very popular book as it has a scope and approach that has not been previously attempted.
Not surprisingly, David points out that this is not the kind of book that he could have written or would have possibly attempted when he was a young academic. With age comes a willingness and ability “to paint with a broader brush” and take on commitments that whilst they contain sufficient scholarly rigour, are by their very nature more accessible to the general reader.
As for new projects he is currently collaborating with John Rodwell in research and writing on the Early Landscape of Wombwell and after that there will no doubt be other avenues to explore. The Wombwell work illustrates in a very direct way the great scope for landscape history work in our area. So much of the change brought about by mining and the industrial revolution overlaid a rich history of agrarian settlement, closely related to ownership and rights of usage. This is the stuff that David relishes.
We concluded our meeting by rejoicing together in the fact that we were not only fortunate enough to have the kind of early upbringings we had but also to have our roots in a geographically, socially and culturally diverse South Yorkshire. Our county is not unique in this respect of course but it certainly continues to offer lots of scope to the very active mind of David Hey.
As he says in the preface to his Penistone book “my great-great grandfather John Hey moved from Shelley to Thurlstone two hundred years ago and many of his descendants still live in the Penistone district. I remain deeply attached to the place.”
If you have not yet read any of David’s work I suggest you start with “A History of Penistone and District”. As he says with considerable modesty, “it is worth it for the photographs alone”.
Published Winter 2005. All information correct at time of print
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