A village that's a sure-fire winner

These two form the twin towers of Great Habton's history - and while farming may play a smaller role, with fewer farmhands among the village population, racing is as strong as ever thanks to Peter and Tim Easterby, whose yard is based here.

Like many other villages, Great Habton has changed over the years - but when faced with the prospect of losing the local pub, The Grapes, villagers rallied to the fight.

The pub - which had been there since around 1760 - was closed down and a planning application had been put forward to turn the place into housing, but the villagers were not going to stand idly by and let one of the main meeting places slip away.

Parish councillor Keith Richardson was one of those involved in the fight.

He said: "We're very lucky to have the pub open. We fought to keep it open.

"It was left to a handful of us to get it together but the fight was well-supported throughout the village.

"We're very lucky to have Patrick and Jenny Crawley there (the new leaseowners) but it's owned by a pub company so it limits what they can do with it. But they're making a good job of it."

One problem the village has been facing is traffic. A lot of drivers use the back roads as a shortcut when traffic is heavy on the A169 between Malton and Pickering - a problem that was exacerbated by the lengthy roadworks on the route last year.

"It is getting to be a serious problem," said Keith. "Because people have no respect for speed limits whatsoever. There's a 30mph speed limit - if they slowed down to 40mph, that would be something."

The police have been consulted about getting a speed camera installed, but the road doesn't offer a straight enough stretch for the cameras to function properly, so the parish council is to investigate getting some speed cushions installed.

Keith said: "People in the village want some speed cushions. It would be unfortunate if we had to have an accident before something was done."

Keith lives in the village with his wife Doreen. Their son Ben goes to Malton School. Keith said: "I like the village life. Unfortunately, village life is going a bit from what it used to be. At one time, everybody knew everybody in the village. Now, you get people coming from all over the place. It's still okay, but I'd love to get people to join in more. But I think it's still very much a village, with a local cricket club, which is very much a traditional thing in Yorkshire."

Keith has a keen interest in the village cricket team, which is need of new blood.

"We're in the middle of rebuilding the cricket team. We were lucky enough last year when we applied to the lottery grant people. We got a grant for some cricket nets and some football nets. The owner of the land is Tim Easterby and he lets us use it.

"I'd like to send a message to all the people who have come to the village that you've got a cricket club, a village hall, a pub - and come and join in. Come and get involved."

Down at The Grapes, the new faces behind the bar are Patrick and Jenny Crawley. Despite having only been at the pub for just over a year, they've been very quick to settle in.

Jenny Crawley hails from Malton, and the couple once ran the Burgate House Hotel in Pickering so although their work in the trade has taken them as far afield as Scotland and Ireland, Yorkshire life is far from unknown to them.

One of the things the Crawleys are trying to do is make The Grapes better known as a place for good food, something they've always paid attention to - Patrick once regularly featuring in a cookery spot on radio in the Middlesbrough area.

Jenny said: "We settled in here very quickly. There's a good mix here of farms, the stable people and jockeys. They've supported us very well, especially Mr Easterby. It's a very nice village - it's certainly got village life. It's still a community spirit."

Patrick said: "I'm a great believer that the village pub is the nexus of what goes on. We started the old dominoes back up again, and the cricket team meets in here. This is about our sixth pub. We liked it because we could come in here and put our ideas in."

When the couple came to the pub, they had plenty of opportunity to put those ideas into practice - in fact, they could easily have found the task quite daunting.

"It was totally gutted," said Patrick.

"We came on the scene just as they started to put it back together again. The room through there," he says, pointing through to the dining room, "used to be the original post office. Then the people before us had it as a bit of a pool room and we've put it back to a dining room."

Over at the modern post office, Bev Hinchliffe is just a visitor to the village. She was sitting in while the usual postmistress was having a holiday.

Bev, who comes from Thornton-le-Dale, has filled in behind many counters around Ryedale and beyond, having previously run the village post office in Snainton. She works whenever someone is needed, and wherever they are needed - which gives her a good perspective on the different ways of life in different villages.

She said: "I do post offices all over. I've only been doing it since last summer, but you get to see lots of characters. The people in Great Habton are all very friendly. They're getting to know me because I've been here a while now. I think people do appreciate having a village post office. It's nice not to have to go to another village."

While farming is still important to the village, it's a now retired farmer who once brought the eye of the farming world to Great Habton.

Jack Bulmer still lives in Manor House Farm with his wife May, while his son still runs the farm. Jack is famous for his Suffolk sheep, which won award after award, including championships at the Great Yorkshire Show, Smithfields, the Royal Show and the Highland Show.

But Jack's life would have taken a very different route, if it weren't for a tragic twist of fate. Jack said: "My brother Bob died when he was 20. He went in for a small operation on a hernia, he came out and had a small blood clot and that killed him. He was the shepherd till that day. He was very keen on sheep. When he died, I took his place."

Jack's brother had been grooming the flock of Leicester sheep for the day the Great Yorkshire Show came to Malton, a day not far off for the novice shepherd Jack from the moment he took on the flock.

He said: "I had his notebook and it might as well have been written in Chinese, that's how little I understood of it."

Despite having had very little to do with sheep previously, he claimed the top prize.

"I always said I was reaping the harvest of Bob's work," said Jack. "I suppose it were in our blood."

If his first venture into showing sheep was a success because of his brother's legacy, the following years were all Jack's own work. He switched to Suffolk sheep, and championship after championship came his way. As he said: "I've won more than anybody else has won."

Jack's wife, May, who is well-known across Ryedale having taught classes in icing cakes for many years, is a member of the village hall committee, and has been since 1962. The village hall is another busy spot - a focus for village life along with the pub, St Chad's Church and the cricket club.

But one of the things which draws most people is the regular old time and sequence dance nights, when the hall is filled with people moving to the beat of the foxtrot or the waltz. May said: "They come from all over. They come from Kirkbymoorside, Bransdale, Scarborough, Whitby, Wykeham...

"There's a very good atmosphere - it seems as though they let their hair down here. But if there's a bar on, they don't want to come. They don't want to drink, they just want to dance."

As elsewhere in the village, there's a lot going on at the village hall - yet another place where the community spirit shines through.

Updated: 11:27 Wednesday, February 12, 2003