C.V. Horner (1897-1980): Biographical Entry

2. 422 HORNER, C.V., ‘Ups and Downs: A Lifetime spent in the Yorkshire Dales’, TS, pp.242 (c.80,000 words). Brunel University Library.

Born 28 Sept 1897 in Swinithwaite, in the Yorkshire Dales. Died May 1980. Father, a gamekeeper, was left a widower in 1900 with 4 sons under the age of 6. He later remarried and had another family of 6. Educated at local school to age 14. Married, 1930, with 2 sons and 3 daughters.

Started farm work and beating on the grouse moors at an early age; living-in odd-job boy for an elderly army Colonel; gamekeeper’s assistant (1912-15); engine-driver on a construction site; munitions worker; received call-up papers but went absent from the army and volunteered for the Royal Navy; demobbed in 1919; quarry worker; freelance rabbit-catcher; gamekeeper (1930-75).

Member of village Reading Room Club; amateur footballer; member of Home Guard during World War II.

Written when in his late seventies, Horner recalls his Yorkshire childhood and a work life spent chiefly on the moors and estates of the Dales with constant use of the humorous anecdote. The text includes comments on his father; songs and ballads; local characters; annual feasts; rural customs; schooling; agricultural labour; diet and food recipes; leisure and entertainments; children’s games; the racing, fishing and shooting fraternity; game keeping and poaching; bird and animal habits; dialect; hospitals. The manuscript was typed by his daughter with some re-arranging of the material to make it chronologically coherent.