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One day in October 1972, in a train from Derby to St Pancras, we signed a cheque and sealed it in an envelope. It was our bid for a derelict hill farm in the North York Moors. Though we did not know it for some anxious weeks we had changed the direction of the whole of the rest of our lives. We were going to London in person because we were too late to trust our bid to the post. In order for it to beat the deadline we had to push it through a solicitor‘s letterbox that evening. We had left it to the eleventh hour, hesitating to abandon a secure and successful teaching career and to risk the entire savings of the ten years of our marriage. As the train rattled on we reviewed yet again the prudent cautions against the wild venture we were contemplating. Every line of argument ran into the buffers of impenetrable uncertainty. Had that neglected land degenerated beyond recall? Would our modest savings stretch to the purchase, re-equipment and re-stocking of the farm and still leave us enough to live on for the year or so before we could expect any income of substance? Did young people exist who would enjoy a period of strenuous, unpaid manual work in glorious country, and if so, were we likely to find them?

The rational case for accepting the challenge Bank House posed depended on encouraging answers to these and a host of other questions. Alas we had none of any certainty. In truth, to be or not to be was about to be determined, less by reasoning and sound advice than by instinct and blind faith. To this day we find it hard to understand how we had the nerve to reach the decision we did or indeed if it was really we that reached it. As at other key turning points of our lives – including our getting married – we felt more like performers in a drama already written than authors free to shape the plot. If the scene was to be set in Glaisdale, the name of the director was  ‘chance’.

The most influential factors affecting our future had been quite outside our control. In the first place we might have been blessed with our prime ambition, to raise our own family. That would probably have exhausted all our excess energy, time and money that in the event made our Bank House adventure feasible. As a childless couple we were free to take risks that would have been foolhardy for responsible parents. Alternatively, Giles might have been successful in one of various applications and interviews for headships and gone on to complete the full normal span of a career in education. Or the owners might not have decided to sell their farm at that time, or our estate agents might not have included the unusual notice of a 136 acre farm with ‘some rough’ – a gross understatement – with dozens of others for bigger houses with about ten acres, which after all was what we had asked for. Or again, we might well have been dissuaded from making a bid at all by our best professional advice that auction under sealed tender was too much of a gamble for such derelict property at a time of worldwide economic crisis. Or of course we might have been outbid by someone with more money and an even greater disregard for business prudence.

We sometimes reflect that the odds against any event happening that does happen are always greater than those in favour. Certainly this seemed the case to us when, almost in disbelief, we signed the deposit cheque accompanying our formal bid for Bank House Farm. As we clattered on towards London we were seized by that sense of timeless unreality experienced on train journeys. In the symbolical dark of an early winter evening we were being carried away from our home and work in the comforting Dove valley, and even further from a remote farm on a hillside in North Yorkshire, to an alien metropolis which seemed to bear little relationship to either farm or school. Of such stuff dreams are made.

To say that we were contemplating giving up teaching for farming is so inadequate an explanation as to be distinctly misleading in regard to each half of the equation. Yes indeed Abbotsholme was a school and Giles had been a housemaster and Head of History there for thirteen years, for the last ten of which he had been Second Master as well. But Abbotsholme was more than just a school, and the job much more than just teaching. It provided education  in the widest sense, for staff as well as for pupils, acquainting both with most interests and activities that genuine curiosity or original sin could devise. By turning hill farmers we stood to lose participation in a rich culture of music and drama, sport and hill walking, in addition to surrendering a secure salary, free use of a lovely Georgian house and garden and almost three months of holiday a year. In the event we were not to go abroad or sing in a choral society again for about twenty years. And of course we should be leaving behind a large, congenial company of colleagues, friends and neighbours inside school and out.

In two important respects the change in our way of life would be far from total. In the first place elements of farming had steadily infiltrated our school existence to the point of becoming Mary‘s major contribution. She had taken advantage of our one and a half acres of garden to raise geese regularly and to provide a lambing haven for a flock of ewes stranded on our doorstep by the foot and mouth epidemic of 1967. This resulted in the establishment of the nucleus of a flock of our own whose descendants still flourish in Glaisdale. More important, Mary helped to retrieve the school farm from the brink of extinction, involving the pupils in the breeding and care of small numbers of cows, sheep and pigs, and in the use of George the carthorse. In Mary‘s experience of practical animal husbandry with Abbotsholme boys and girls, some of the seeds of our Bank House venture had been germinating for several years. The other main strand of continuity between school and the proposed full time farming was the educational purpose fundamental to the whole project. Our starting point was not a personal desire for adventure or just a change of scene for its own sake, attractive though these were, but our intimate knowledge of the common failure of most formal academic education to meet the deeper needs of many young people. We had a strong hunch that purposeful physical work, especially that concerned with the care of animals and the land, could be therapeutic much as spinach and wholemeal bread can help make up for the deficiency of a poor diet. We had known this prescription to succeed for many people, ourselves included. There was therefore never any question of our ceasing to work with and for young people. Rather we were searching for new ways of using our energies, talents and experience to complement the essential work of normal schooling. If in so doing we were able to assist other causes in which we were interested, such as the abolition of factory farming and a life-style based on maximum consumption of material goods, so much the better. The therapeutic, educational factor came foremost: the farming was to be a means to that end. All of which seemed very abstract at the time of our train journey. The day after tomorrow we should wake up back at school again. Bells would ring, pupils would clamour, lessons would resume and everything would be back to normal again except ……… except for the cheque book and its stub-end recording a big sum of money. What if it didn‘t come back?

Our search for a new life had been occupying us increasingly for some years accompanied by a degree of growing unease with the degree of privilege of our present existence. Could we pursue the educational principles we thought so valuable at Abbotsholme so that they were available more widely regardless of parental wealth?

Giles had reached that stage of a teaching career when the possibility of a headship could hardly be ignored. However, the prospect of becoming an administrator, almost a businessman, instead of the purveyor of interest and understanding, was distinctly unattractive. Moreover the discreet, self-effacing role of a headmaster‘s wife would not have come easily or naturally to someone of Mary‘s spontaneous and impatient unorthodoxy. We were not interested in headship for its own sake, only if it offered scope for breaking new ground and a chance to resist a relentless demand for exam results. We were approached by Governors looking for a Head to establish a new ecumenical sixth-form college for Arab students in Jerusalem but decided it was not for us. An interview at a boarding school in a more extreme ‘progressive’ tradition left it with the (correct) suspicion that Giles was insufficiently libertarian. Applications for two other schools failed for the opposite reason. One was for a mildly conventional Quaker school and the other for an old country town Grammar school with a single boarding house. These we had selected as being potentially suitable for a quixotic but serious scheme we had been planning, to run a boarding school with a residential home for old people, in the belief that segregation of young and old is to the detriment of both and that sharing activities and facilities would enrich the lives of both parties. Not surprisingly we found no buyers.

The more we looked at existing posts the clearer it became that if we wanted to put our ideas into practice we should have to create our own place and pattern of work. At this point, in the summer holidays of 1971, we chose to tour the border country and the Scottish Highlands with our car full of camping equipment and our heads full of ambitions. We were surprised to find how many big houses there were for sale and how moderate their asking price in some cases. After trespassing in the grounds of an eighteenth century mansion we learned from a nearby innkeeper that it was due to be pulled down because prolonged efforts to find a buyer had failed. We also learned that its last occupants had been a girls‘ school. That set us dreaming. Oddly enough really big houses seemed relatively cheaper than small ones. Might our small savings purchase a place in which to run one of our schemes? During the next twelve months we did a little arithmetic and a great deal more dreaming so that as soon as the summer holidays of 1972 began we set off on a repeat of our northern tour with the specific intention of tracking down some property inconveniently large for a typical family home but appropriate for whichever of our schemes we reckoned we could tackle in it.

To our surprise and disappointment the market had changed radically for the worse since the previous summer. We found that most of the empty houses we had seen had now been sold and the prices of all had risen sharply. By the time we reached Oban we realised that a housing boom was well under way which seriously threatened our ability to finance any of our projects. Furthermore, besides the rise in the prices of houses and land there was a wider economic crisis looming because of the disputes between the Arab oil producing countries. Inflation rose, share prices fell, making it an unwise moment to sell our assets or to borrow heavily especially for so uncertain a project as ours. We realised that with the deteriorating economic situation we must buy our property very soon or postpone it for quite a long time. The casual approach we had followed so far, waiting like Mr Micawber for something to turn up, didn‘t promise well, so we began a more systematic search through estate agencies beginning, since that was where we happened to be, at Oban.

An estate agent close to the harbour found our enquiries so lacking in precision as to the size, character and price and location of the property we sought as to deter him from giving us notices of any appropriate pending sales. After that it seemed common sense to get in an open launch and pay for a trip to see the seals ‘money back if you don‘t see any’. The seals were reassuringly real compared with our daydream property.

We extended our enquiries to England as soon as we returned home asking for a biggish unmodernised house with outbuildings and land for limited livestock, say ten acres. Through the early part of that autumn term we were inundated with advertisements for small farmsteads in mid-Wales which claimed that their greatest attraction was that recent motorway development had brought them within thirty to forty minutes of the centre of Birmingham. The extraordinary number of little farms for sale in the same area suggested that the prosperity and social cohesion of the district was threatened whereas we wanted to be part of a living agricultural community and not of a large scale invasion of Midlands businessmen.

 Then out of the blue came the notice of the sale of Bank House Farm with its 136 acres in Glaisdale in the North York Moors, ‘some rough’. Our first reaction was to pass it over without a second thought on the grounds that we could not afford so many acres nor could we imagine being able to manage them. What made us give it that second thought was those moors. We knew them to be as beautiful a district as any in England. We had spent our honeymoon with two of Giles‘ aunts who lived there in Lastingham and we knew how unspoilt it was in terms of its community as well as its scenery. A quick look at the map showed Glaisdale to be quite near. With so little else on offer might it not be worth having a look at it? If so, we should have to move quickly as there were only a few weeks before the bids had to be in. Unfortunately the following week-end Giles would be leading a hill walking party of pupils in the Lake District so Mary had to undertake a first reconnaissance on her own.

That solo trip made all the difference though not in any of the ways we expected. Having to find out of season bed and breakfast, she was directed to a farm just up the dale from Bank House. Then she developed a bad cold which provoked the concern and generous cosseting of hosts which led to a greater intimacy and interest than a casual one night visitor would normally achieve. As a result Mary divulged the purpose of her visit and even outlined our plans. Instead of pouring cold water on the project as might have been expected the couple encouraged it and sent Mary on her way revived and remarkably well briefed as to the advantages and disadvantages facing any purchaser of Bank House. In a nutshell, the gist of her report back to Giles was that the farm was so seriously derelict in most respects, both the land and its buildings, that it was unlikely to attract either the competition or prices most farms were attracting at that time. Furthermore it was most unlikely to provide a reasonable income for quite some time. The normal advice to be expected from those best qualified to judge would obviously be not to touch it with a barge pole. On the other hand two factors in particular weighed more heavily with us than they might have done with other potential buyers: the exceptional beauty of the area and the quality of the farming community. Were these mere lightweight consideration in the scales against the enormous drawbacks or might they be sufficient to warrant a visit by the two of us together especially since time was running against us and we had no other immediate prospects to prefer?

The following week-end we booked in for bed and breakfast with the same, kind, potential neighbours and drove up for the briefest of visits. We beat the bounds of the farm and took photographs. The house we hardly saw for the vendors were unwelcoming and gloomy just like the photographs when printed, for the weather was dark and overcast. Then we had to dash back home armed with more than ample adverse evidence to begin, whenever school duties would allow, to assess, to discuss, to conjecture and eventually to decide.

We had fallen in love with Glaisdale, but it was not Glaisdale that was for sale, it was the derelict farm of Bank House. Wherever we had gone it was the same story of neglect and dilapidation: few internal field boundaries were stock-proof; tumbling stone walls had been stop-gapped crudely with barbed wire; many acres of pasture had been invaded by bracken, others by unchecked docks thistles and rushes; tracks had disintegrated and scores of thorn trees had established themselves on steeper pastures. It was also abundantly clear what a huge amount of drainage was desperately needed. Wasn‘t so much visible trouble enough to warn anyone off without the further hazard of invisible damage caused by neglected husbandry, especially the vital question of soil fertility which must have suffered from years of lack of livestock? The only animals the vendors kept were a few pigs and Muscovy ducks. Why then in view of all that we had found out and seen for ourselves was it not a foregone conclusion that we should sadly turn our backs on the Bank House sale as a glorious might-have-been and direct our search elsewhere? In some ways we shall never know or understand completely but we have some clues and there was not a total lack of method in our madness as our final debate in the train ended in signing our cheque and sealing our bid.

To begin with there was the setting. Dismal weather had not been able to hide the abiding beauty of the dale with the deep red of sodden winter bracken and its pattern of stone walls fretted across the dull November green of the valley bottom and the steepening slopes above. Who could settle in flat country knowing that such beauty had been on offer? More important however was the effect our encounter with Bank House had on our thinking. For too long we had been contemplating different projects, needing different settings, directed to providing different services, to plug various gaps in our welfare state. We had been unable to set estate agents identifiable targets because quite simply we did not know definitely which purpose they were to serve. Meeting Bank House and Glaisdale altered all that. Here was a specific challenge which narrowed our options to manageable proportions. From first glance it was clear that its isolation ruled out all consideration of care for the elderly as a main function. The limited accommodation similarly ruled out notions of a school as such and the most vague inclination we had entertained of commune life. What we were left with was essentially practical. Bank House cried out for restoration and the longer we considered it the more we realised how well that restoration could be fitted with many of our interests, our skills and our aspirations. Above all, we came to realise that the very serious degree of the farm‘s dereliction which frightened off conventional farmers and anyone for whom profit was a prime motive, was in fact an asset for us and a defining quality. There was so much to do in every way of unskilled hand work no-one could possibly be useless, no-one however backward or handicapped could fail to know he or she was contributing to a visible worthwhile improvement and helping to provide for our own necessities of living, growing our own food, fuelling our own fires and caring for our own livestock with whom the emotionally troubled if any such materialised could identify themselves.

Furthermore it was by no means all altruism. Our own selfish interests and longings would also be served. We had been increasingly at loggerheads with the crude materialistic values dominating social change; with ever rising expectations of creature comforts and intolerance or resentment if they were denied; with the suburbanisation of much of the countryside and the changes in agriculture itself. Here was a chance for us to live and work close to nature, close to the animals on whom we were to depend for a living and on a small scale in which the troubled would not find themselves insignificant.

Anyone still wondering at our final decision to sink all our savings and opt for a life of physical exertion and scanty spending power should consider that there are always people who are motivated by idealism and vision - more of them than are commonly recognised. In our eyes we were not buying dereliction that only too obviously existed, but our vision of what Bank House could become, and the prospect of the transition was itself most attractive. Right from the start we were buoyed up by the reaction of almost all our friends and relations who not only wished us well but wanted to share in our venture as far as their utterly different circumstances allowed. They were to prove an enormous support in the months and years ahead.

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