Thoughts on Thornton Watlass

(Wordpress is not playing ball.  I give up.)  

Today I had a quiet day at work (for once).  It occurred to me that I have not blogged for months.  Here's my latest thoughts that have come to me.

Thornton Watlass is a picture postcard village in the Yorkshire Dales with:

• Village pub facing onto:
• The village green/cricket pitch
• Old oak tree, well over 500 years old, probably much older
• Church with 13th century tower - see pic below

Schatz and I visited Thornton Watlass in August 2019 during a whistle-stop tour of the Dales, namely:

• Masham
• Thornton Watlass
• Burriill (the hamlet where I was baptised)
• Bedale
• Leyburn
• Magical Mystery Tour through some of the villages

Before popping into the pub for coffee and chat, Schatz and I took a look around the village church, including the churchyard.  Unlike in Germany, graves are not rented for twenty or so years.  The grave and gravestone stay there forever.  My paternal grandfather and grandmother are buried there.  My grandfather has no gravestone, but I know where his grave is.  He died in 1951.  Six years after WWII, when there was still rationing, people in the countryside were so poor, that the family could only just afford a funeral.  A gravestone would have been a luxury.  Back in 1988, Grandma was buried there.  By then, she had taken out funeral insurance, which paid for funeral and for stone.  

Post-war, it was taboo for a woman to be a single mother, even as a widow.  Grandma rapidly re-married.  When second husband died in 1976, he was buried in Bedale cemetery.  He has no gravestone.  When I asked my dad, I was told in straight Yorkshire language:

"Gravestone for him?  NOBODY could stand him.  Nobody has visited his grave since he went.  Your Grandmother was not going to waste good money on a gravestone for him!  No way at all!"

Long live Yorkshire honesty!