STANLEY’S CROOK.

[Stanley]

STANLEY’S CROOK.
In Scotland the standard shank for a crook was a hazel cut near running water. Vera’s stick is hazel. However, there is an even better shank but much rarer in the North of England because you seldom find a straight one, this is blackthorn, the hedgerow tree that bears sloes. Vera and I had gone up the dale with Cyril Richardson one day and we called in at a friend of his at Aysgarth who was a stick dresser. [Tom Dinsdale] While we were in his workshop I spotted a blackthorn shank in the corner, it was the best I have ever seen, straight as a shot and slow grown, you could tell by the number of knobbles down it where side shoots had grown. I homed in on this and asked him what he was going to do with it. He said he had been drying it for five years and was going to use it for a shank in a crook he was entering in the Great Yorkshire Show at Harrogate. I told him that I wanted it when it was finished and would he let me know when I could have it. I then forgot all about it until Christmas two years later when Vera gave it to me as a present. I don’t know whether he ever entered it in a show but it stands in the corner in the front room and still gives me pleasure. I think this was about 1976.

Dear Stanley,

On 13 Jul 2006, at 09:07, Stanley Challenger Graham wrote:
Daniel, I need some help.  I have been totally confused by a very badly written article in the Yorkshire Post this morning in which they refer to the Wensleydale stick-dresser 'Tim' Dinsdale.  Can you dig back in your records and let me know what date it was we visited Tom at Aysgarth and I did the pic of you with him?


I still have the stick. It came back to me after my Dad died.

We visited Tom Dinsdale one snowy, blowy night with Cyril and Vera in December 1976. Cyril wanted to buy me a stick as a present to say thank you for giving him and Elsie a set of prints of the pig killing. You drove the white Landrover.

Best things,

Daniel



Thanks for that Dan, I thought your files would be more accessible than mine.  I'd forgotten that the stick was for your Dad.  Can you remember the blackthorn shank that I admired so much in his workshop?  Vera gave the stick to me a couple of years later and when we split up she kept the one the man at Ayr made for me and I took the Dinsdale stick.  I've been using it a lot lately and it is universally admired.  Did you know that Dinsdale crooks and sticks are now very collectable?
 
Glad the Pig is Popular....  as for my voice.......
 
Love S XXX