'Everyone must make sacrifices, even golfers' - Heslington Hall during WW2

One of the most significant periods in Heslington Hall’s history is its occupation by RAF Bomber Command No.4 group  from 1940 until 1947. Whilst attempting to reimagine life in the Hall and the village during these tense years of British history, Donald Ward’s Heslington Memories have become our discoveries. And whilst recounting life in the village in these notoriously dark times for the British, writing always with a comfortingly upbeat undertone he sheds some light on Heslington’s ‘War Years’. The anecdotes we have had the fortune of reading show the way servicemen and women, villagers, in Heslington and no doubt villages and towns up and down the country refused to let the tragedies of war weigh too heavily on their outlook, and life went on.

Heslington Hall was thankfully never hit by any bombs during the war, the nearest place that was hit was a house called Spring Villa; we hear that although thankfully there were no fatalities the watchdog had to be put down, and ward remarks ‘I bet it was a Christmas they never forgot, as all the windows were broken and the house was covered in soot’.

Heslington village, undated

Ward was too young at the time to join the RAF himself, but he was still active in village work .He recalls one particular night on fire duty from which we can envisage the tensions and anxiety that would befall a village, especially one with a Bomber Command headquarters through the long nights. The pair were patrolling in front of the Hall when his partner ‘a nervous man’ jumped into him and let out a terrific scream, shouting ‘It got me!!’ .Far from capture by Nazi invaders he had, in Dad’s Army fashion, walked into the head of a horse.

Ward came across other troubles while undertaking another job of transferring the cattle. A problem similarly and frequently encountered by his father who would often receive angry messages from RAF bases requesting him ‘to remove his cows from the runway’, since planes were able neither to take off nor land. After Donald had successfully and without trouble guided his cattle to the golf course, they immediately and frantically broke into a gallop right across the fairways. This was much to the outrage of ‘all associated with golf’ but in these difficult times for everyone they were quite rightly told that ‘There’s a war on and everyone must make sacrifices, even golfers’.

Before the RAF took over during the war the house had been occupied by the 4^th Lord and Lady Deramore and Ward describes one particularly amusing scene during a shooting trip. The shoot, at Langwith woods, had stopped for lunch and the Lord Deramore, having taken a walk, noticed that the lavatory of one of only three residents of Langwith, an old lady, had fallen down. She answered his concerned enquiries with a description of a somewhat less effective set up involving a plank of wood between two trees. Deramore was understandably upset by this and on his return home sent his joiner to build her a new lavatory. Upon his return to Langwith he asked how she was finding her new lavatory to which she replied that it was too good to use, so she was keeping her hens in it!

This post was written by Hugo Laffey, one of our student interns.
For more on the work of our student interns see Heslington Hall - Country Life and Archiving Ayckbourn

Heslington Hall - Country Life



A fellow Intern and I are currently working at the Borthwick Institute for Archives and are putting together an exhibition about the history of Heslington Hall. The building itself has not always been the administrative hub for the university, and it used to be a grand country seat and a family home with extensive and renowned grounds. It was originally constructed in 1568 by Thomas Eynns, the secretary to the Council in the North. The Hall then passed through a number of families, either through purchase or marriage, including the Heskeths, the Yarboroughs and finally the Deramores. During this long period it encountered a variety of events including its use as the headquarters of Lord Fairfax during the Siege of York in 1644, various structural changes and royal visits. Its usage changed in the 1940s when it became the headquarters of the RAF No. 4 Group, which was part of Bomber Command during the Second World War, where an important number of raids and missions were planned out. It then came into the hands of the Rowntree Social Service Trust in 1955 whose original aim was to turn it into a folk park, before eventually in 1962 it became what we see today; a central part of the university and campus.

Heslington Hall in Country Life Magazine

The hall and gardens have been well documented and have often been admired throughout history. This can be demonstrated by its appearance in Country Life Magazine twice - once in 1900 and again in 1913 whilst still a family home and then in 1971 when the university had been built. 



In its first appearance in Country Life in 1900, the gardens are praised for “occupy(ing) a notable place in the history of English gardening.”  We are given a scenic tour of the grounds, and witness the elegant sculptures and flowers that it contains. The large lake was also a source of pleasure and we can see in the photo someone boating on it. Although we may recognise some elements such as the yew trees, these used to be more extensive and stretched right up to the front of the house and were described as “fantastic yews, unlike anything else ever seen on sea or land".

Heslington Hall Gardens, 1900

In the later edition of Country Life published in 1971 the university is now the focus, and the article chronicles the transformation of the landscapes of Heslington Hall from elegant gardens to university campus. It is not critical of this change and describes the new vista as “one of the most original landscapes created in Britain this century has yet to attract the attention it deserves”.

University of York campus in Country Life Magazine, 1971

Looking at these articles it is interesting to compare the vastly different ways the landscape around the hall has changed and been adapted. But despite this as you walk around the campus today, you can still make out some of the old elements of the hall and its “garden world of strange character”.

This post was written by Martha Cattell, one of our student interns.

Archiving the Life and Works of Alan Ayckbourn

Photograph copyright of Scarborough Theatre 
Trust/Stephen Joseph Theatre

For two years now, the Borthwick Institute for Archives has been holding the library of Alan Ayckbourn. As the author of over seventy plays, Ayckbourn is one of Britain’s most successful and prolific playwrights. But, whilst Ayckbourn is primarily a writer, he is also known for his work as an educator, a businessman and for many in the arts, as a friend. Over the next eight weeks, we will be delving into personal correspondence, drafted plays and interview transcripts in order to better understand this colossus of the theatre. And indeed, in amongst the audition notes, scribbled stage directions and countless fan letters, we have already begun unearthing surprises that have started to sketch the outline of the life and works on Alan Ayckbourn.

Ayckbourn’s first play ‘The Square Cat’ premiered in 1959 and was followed by over half a century of work during a long and exciting career. A notoriously busy man, Ayckbourn has spent the last fifty years of his professional life dividing his time between the bright lights of London’s West End and the sea-mist drenched cobbles of Scarborough, where he held the position of artistic director at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. But far from epitomising the lonely lot of a playwright, shut up in isolation and feverishly scribbling away, Ayckbourn has proven himself a writer of the people. Within his seventy-something plays there inhabit the voices of countless characters; ink and paper creations that, sharpened with the biting wit of a playwright unafraid to look beneath the covers, have continuously taught their audiences undeniable truth about themselves. Be it negotiating the delicate power balance of marriage, or navigating the comic intricacies of farce, his work has continually reached high acclaim and is not devoid of even the most challenging material. Alan Ayckbourn’s work will often give the members of its audience a slap around the face that will draw laughter and tears in one sitting and inevitably send the tingle of uncomfortable familiarity down their collective spine. 

 For the Borthwick, perhaps the most exciting aspect of archiving the writing of Alan Ayckbourn is that he is still living and writing. With his latest play premiering in Scarborough next month, Ayckbourn’s vast career is a testament to the growth and development of his own writing craft. Over fifty years in theatre has produced creative partnerships with colleagues such as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Michael Gambon and Prunella Scales, to name but a few. Ayckbourn’s work also extends to the support of children’s theatre, with the playwright linked to youth groups and having written several plays aimed at an underage audience. With an archive as rich in social and contextual history as it is in professional insight, the works of Alan Ayckbourn are already highlighting new and exciting stories from one of Britain’s most revered writers.

 This post was written by Maddy Pelling, Ayckbourn Intern. 

You can read more about Maddy's work with Alan Ayckbourn's archive in her post Answering the Critics with Laughter, Shakespeare and Toilet Paper: The Comedy of Alan Ayckbourn.