The Co-operative set up its Community Fund in 1997. Since then they have wasted no time in providing millions of pounds worth of cash for deserving local projects and organisations from kids’ sports teams through to gardening clubs.

The fund is made up of donations made by The Co-operative’s Members and this November will see £1.2 million given to The Community Fund. The money is distributed at a local level to projects that will provide a long-term benefit to the community. 

Craven Community Projects Group is delighted to confirm that funding has been received from the Co-operative Community Fund to help pay for website hosting for Craven's Part in the Great War. This invaluable support is greatly appreciated by group members, relatives and visitors.

A better community starts right here

A better way to do business

Our members believe that Co-operative solutions are the best for our communities.  Co-operative businesses and organisations are great ways to do business. Find out how The Co-operative Enterprise Hub supports the creation of new Co-operatives across the UK.

Further details from:

Community Fund
New Century House
Manchester
M60 4ES 

By phone:
Help line: 0844 262 4001

By email:
community.fund@co-operative.coop

There’s now two easy ways for you to help raise funds for

Craven Community Projects Group!

easyfundraising is a shopping directory listing some of your favourite online stores including Amazon, NEXT, Debenhams, John Lewis, Toys R Us, HMV and over 500 others. Just use the links on the easyfundraising site whenever you shop online and, at no extra cost to you, we'll receive a free donation of up to 15% from every purchase you make. It really is that simple!

It’s completely FREE to register and you won’t pay a penny more for your shopping when you use the easyfundraising site. In fact you can even SAVE MONEY as many retailers offer discounts, special offers and even 'e-vouchers' exclusive to easyfundraising.

If you shop online anyway then why not raise valuable extra funds for us by using this scheme. All you need to do is visit http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/ccpg and when you register, select Craven Community Projects Group as the organisation you wish to support.

When you search the Web with easysearch, you’ll raise around 1p for us with every search you make! Just like easyfundraising it is completely free to use and if you make just 10 searches a day, you could raise £25 a year - or more - for us, just by switching to easysearch.

 Check out our unique easysearch page at http://ccpg.easysearch.org.uk and use it every time you search the Web.

Craven Community Projects Group has received sponsorship from Tarmac Ltd. 

This invaluable support will enable the group to develop outreach work with volunteers in the district of Craven

Tarmac has a long and proud tradition of charitable and community support and is committed to helping and improving the communities in which we operate.

Our vision, mission and values
To be the first choice for building materials that meet the essential needs for the sustainable development of the world in which we live.

 Our Values

- Reliable
- Responsive
- Understanding
- Straightforward

Our values are not empty promises. They help us to carry out our work day in, day out; they guide us in our dealings with each other and with our customers and stakeholders; ultimately they are the bedrock of the culture of our company.

Society
Wake up in the morning and our products will be in the very fabric of your home; the toothpaste you brush your teeth with; the bridges you cross; the floor you walk on; the office you work in; and even be in the sports pitches you play on. So if you thought Tarmac was just about roads, think again...

Tarmac in our Society
Many products we take for granted - from paper to glass, cosmetics to toothpaste - are manufactured using materials derived from quarrying. Aggregates provide the raw materials for the world we live in. So not only do aggregates give us places to live, places to work and places to play, but they also underpin our society.

Communication
We seek to promote and maintain open and honest dialogue with all of our stakeholders, not least the communities in which we operate, and we take pride in being a good neighbour.

Understanding
It's important to us that the local communities where we operate understand what we do and why we do it. So we hold open days and exhibitions, issue newsletters, set up local liaison groups and take part in local events. We also have strong links with schools - giving talks on careers in construction, and advising education bodies on construction qualifications. We've even set up our own education website - Quarryville - www.tarmac.co.uk/quarryville

Support
Tarmac sponsors and supports community groups, environmental projects, and a variety of charities and trusts. Projects to date have included those that encourage and develop community involvement and spirit, and create and enhance habitats for birds and wildlife. We've funded agricultural shows and school football strips and maintained public footpaths and bridleways among many others.

For further information please visit www.tarmac.co.uk

Helping our volunteers to see IT clearly

For a proactive and friendly service visit

www.gritstone.co.uk

Tel: 01756 730030

The Fleets, Fleets Lane, Rylstone, Skipton, BD23 6NA

Craven Community Projects Group is proud to be supported by

Skipton Building Society

Skipton Building Society is the UK’s sixth largest building society. Founded in 1853, Skipton enjoys a national presence represented by its 79 branches, covering Aberdeen to Plymouth, with over 600,000 customers.

An innovator in the field of mortgage and investment products, the Society stands apart from its counterparts as the parent to 19 subsidiary companies, many of which operate in the financial market.

Why Mutual Matters

Doing it for the right reasons matters
Skipton Building Society is a mutual organisation which operates in the interests of its members. It is run by a board of directors who are responsible for deciding the strategy. They act as trustees, safeguarding Skipton’s assets so that future members will have access to cheaper mortgages and higher interest rates for savers.

Being able to have your say matters
Being a mutual means that most of our customers, who have a mortgage or savings account, are members and have certain rights to vote and receive information. They can also attend and speak at our AGM. Each member has one vote regardless of how much money they have invested or borrowed, or how many accounts they hold.

Offering a better service matters
Building societies differ greatly from banks that are often listed on the stock market and are owned by and run for their shareholders. Building societies such as Skipton have no shareholders requiring annual dividends because they are not companies.

This enables us to run on much lower costs and offer cheaper mortgages and better rates of interest on savings than banks.

The smallest of differences matters
A way of examining how much value a customer is getting from a financial organisation is to look at the difference between the interest rate a customer receives for their savings and the interest rate they pay for their mortgage. The narrower the difference between the two, the better value the organisation is offering.

This is called the net interest margin and, as of 31 December 2006, Skipton’s was 0.72% - one of the lowest in the industry. Most building societies operate on margins of less than 1.5% whereas banks tend to have margins above 2%.

As a mutual organisation we recognise the importance of supporting the community. Through Skipton Building Communities, we support numerous types of good causes throughout the country, not only through financial support and sponsorship, but through staff volunteering and fundraising. It’s all about giving something back to the communities in which our members live and work.

Craven Community Projects Group is indebted to Skipton Building Society for their support since November 2006, which is helping to train and support our volunteers to work with people in the local community

For further information, please visit www.skipton.co.uk

The course of the twentieth century was shaped by two world wars, and in particular by the changes to society that followed the Great War of 1914 -1918.
 
Most local families have been touched in some way by this war and although most of this generation has passed on, the memories of this traumatic period in British history survive in oral accounts, handed down to children and grandchildren who are still alive today.

In most communities there is at least one war memorial that commemorates the names of local men and women who fell during the conflicts. There are also more personal and tangible pieces of evidence - medals, photographs, letters and postcards sent back from the Front Line, and remnants of military uniform such as regimental cap badges.

These clues, passed down through a family as heirlooms, or often still hidden in boxes waiting to be discovered in attics and cellars, can provide a gateway into the world of some of the individuals commemorated on this website.

If you can provide us with any memorabilia or information, then please contact us on info@cpgw.org.uk or write to:

The Secretary
Craven Community Projects Group
The Ives
Chapel Lane
Hebden in Craven
Skipton
North Yorkshire
BD23 5DT

Craven Community Projects Group (CCPG) is pleased to announce that a final piece of vital work on the website is now being completed thanks to a generous Grassroots Grant from the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. This research work is entitled The Craven Pioneer Project.

It is a project that developed out of work and research on www.cpgw.org.uk - a task that became a significantly bigger endeavour than the group ever envisaged. 

CCPG has two rare reels of microfilm from the British Library at Colindale of the West Yorkshire Pioneer (1917 & 1918) and our volunteers are working to identify, transcribe and transfer any historical and personal articles from these films that relate to any of the ‘missing’ men and women from Craven who died in the Great War - (please see our major update article November 2007).

The first Skipton newspaper was the Craven Weekly Pioneer and General Advertiser for West Yorkshire and East Lancashire which was started around 1865 and continued until 1871 when it became the Craven Pioneer. In 1884 it became known as the West Yorkshire Pioneer and East Lancashire News and in 1934 it was finally named the West Yorkshire Pioneer. Meanwhile a rival, The Craven Herald, appeared in 1875 becoming the Craven Herald and Wensleydale Standard in 1878 and then later, in 1922, it became known as the Craven Herald again. In the early 1930s the Craven Times made a very brief appearance (Colindale Library lists only a single edition). In 1937 the West Yorkshire Pioneer merged with the Craven Herald to become the newspaper which still serves the community today. 

To date we have located and transcribed 1,018 articles from the West Yorkshire Pioneer (1914 – 16) and 4,842 articles from the Craven Herald, however, we believe there are still many articles from 1917-18 and these need to be found in order to offer people a comprehensive and complete database on www.cpgw.org.uk 

At the moment no library in Craven or Yorkshire holds these microfilms and therefore it would be extremely difficult for existing family and/or local historians to trace this information – people would have to visit the British Library and pay to download the information. 

At the end of the project, the group will donate the missing microfilms - in perpetuity - to Skipton Library for the whole community to enjoy. 

Volunteers are also completing their work on a collection of personal memorabilia – items that have been donated by existing relatives over the past two years and these will also be uploaded on to the site and include: photographs, diary extracts, medals, letters, army records and historical documents.

Grassroots Grants are being delivered in North Yorkshire by the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust in partnership with York & North Yorkshire Community Foundation.  The purpose of this grants programme is to support small informal voluntary and community groups and organisations, many of whom are dependent on volunteers

Grassroots Grants are supported by the Office of the Third Sector, the Community Development Foundation, Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust and York & North Yorkshire Community Foundation.

For further information please visit www.ydmt.org

Craven Community Projects Group:

Nominated as one of the finalists in the Heritage Groups category for the Yorkshire & Humber region. 

Photo: (second in - left to right): Chris Foster, John Richardson and Charlotte Foster attending the Awards Ceremony at The Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York, June 2008.

To mark a decade of recognising the importance of volunteering, this year The Nationwide Building Society has extended their awards scheme to encompass the theme of heritage. Heritage has many faces, from village museums to biodiversity programmes, from local cultural traditions to archaeological digs. All of these facets of heritage rely heavily upon volunteer support, protecting and celebrating the rich history and diversity of our islands.

The Nationwide Building Society is delighted to welcome the Heritage Lottery Fund as their expert partners in the new awards scheme for 2008 – The Nationwide Community & Heritage Awards.

Keith Taylor
Swaledale and Wharfedale Remembered;

Aspects of Dales Life through Peace and War

The book not only traces the lives of all 340 servicemen - killed in both the First and Second World Wars from Arkengarhdale, Swaledale, Langstrothdale, Littondale and Wharfedale - but also attempts to place them back into the Dales that they would have been familiar with. Many of the 520 photographs Keith has obtained provide an evocative look at the way of life in the villages and towns, prior to the Great War, and also the years leading up to the Second World War.

For more information please contact Keith Taylor on 01629 732622 or Mobile 07790 575077

William Mitchell MBE
Skipton and the Craven Dales

 Skipton, in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, has a plexus of small valleys but is almost ringed by heather moors. The town was established when a Norman lord built a motte and bailey castle on a rock above a beck to keep an eye on traffic in the Aire Gap, a natural route through the Pennines. Skipton (literally 'sheep town') was given a regional character through the influence of Robert de Romille. The Cliffords, lords of Skipton from 1311 until the death of Lady Anne in 1675, subsequently enhanced the town's importance, but its further growth was afterwards inhibited by the Castle Estate refusing to make land available on long leases.

In the early 1840s, as steam engines began to replace waterpower in local textile mills, a mob of disenchanted handloom weavers, known as 'plug-drawers', visited the town to stop industrial production. But in 1870, the new Dewhurst mill alone had work for 800 people. Less than a century later, outpriced by imports, Skipton's textile trade began a rapid decline until it was virtually non-existent.

To the south of Skipton, the landscape is now blighted by industry (mineral exploitation, especially of lead, besmirched the moors of Grassington and Greenhow), but northwards are the unspoilt Craven Dales - notably Wharfedale and Ribblesdale - where you might travel for miles and not see a mill chimney. This book relates Skipton to the Craven district, an area of outstanding natural beauty which has the largest outcrop of limestone in the country. The area's farming story is told, beginning in prehistory, when breeds of sheep and cattle were first kept as stock, to the current climate of uncertainty in the agricultural world. With the Romantic Age came the first tourists, who flocked to admire the breathtaking cliffs, gorges and caves of Craven. Craven's cultural heritage, which survives in poetry, painting, prose and music, is also explored. Richly illustrated, this book will be welcomed by local historians and the region's many visitors alike.

Available from www.phillimore.co.uk

 Andrew Rawson
British Army Handbook 1914 – 1918

In 1914, the British Army fielded an Expeditionary Force of seven divisions totalling 150,000 men in support of France and Belgium. From these modest beginnings over seven million men eventually volunteered or were conscripted. Nearly a million of them came from the Empire and Dominions. British Army Handbook is a highly illustrated and comprehensive guide to all aspects of the British Army in the Great War.

It covers the men who fought for Britain, from the ‘Old Contemptibles’ – the professionals who stemmed the German advance at the beginning of the War – to the Territorials, Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ volunteers and the conscripts who eventually defeated the Kaiser’s armies four years later.

Andrew Rawson examines all aspects of a soldier’s everyday life including training, trench life, life behind the lines, uniforms, and weapons. He charts the growth of the Army from a small professional body into a huge civilian Army and the steep learning curve it had to follow. Unique detailed divisional histories are also included, an invaluable tool for researchers and family historians.

Included in this new book are details on how the Army constantly strived to introduce technological, tactical and logistical improvements in the Arms and Services. Personalities – commanders and prominent veterans – are discussed as well as the legacy of remembrance, cemeteries, fiction and poetry, making this an indispensable guide to Britain’s Army of the First World War.

Andrew Rawson is a self-employed civil engineer. He has written six books for the ‘Battleground Europe’ series and three for the ‘Images of War’ series; both with Pen & Sword’s. This is his first book for Sutton. Andrew lives in Skipton, North Yorkshire.

ISBN 0 7509 3745 9 Publication Date: 1st June 2006 Hardback £25.00
               
To request an interview with Andrew or to order a review copy, please contact Victoria Carvey on 01453 732 423 or email vcarvey@haynes-sutton.co.uk

A Grammar School at War

Steven Howarth

A new book featuring Craven and the Great War has been written by Ermysted’s teacher Steven Howarth, it is entitled ‘A Grammar School at War – the Story of Ermysted’s Grammar School during the Great War’. The Grammar School was one of the major secondary schools of the Skipton and Craven district of Yorkshire at the time of the War, taking in boarders as well as local boys. The main focus is on 54 Old Boys and Masters of the Skipton School who died serving in the armed forces, predominantly the Army. Nearly half these individuals held commissions, whilst many of the other ranks were NCOs. Whilst a sizeable proportion served with the local Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment, there was a wide range of other regiments represented.  The individual profiles help relate the story of the full span of the War and covers key battles such as Loos, Somme, Arras, Passchendaele, Cambrai, the German Spring Offensive and the 100 Days Campaign of 1918.

Each individual receives a detailed account of his background, school days, civilian career, military service and circumstances of death. Detailed research for the book has utilised School records, local newspapers, battalion war diaries and service files at the National Archive. There is a full ‘Roll of Service’ – listing 232 individuals – and details of 16 individuals who were decorated. Also included are letters written to the School by serving Old Boys and an account of the War’s impact on School life itself.

The book is soft-back, A-4 size and 208 pages long. There are 120 photographs, the bulk being of the ‘Fallen’ Old Boys; where available photographs of individuals both as boys at School and as servicemen have been included. The retail price is £15 per copy.

To purchase a copy – Send a cheque for £18.00 (includes cost 2nd Class postage and packaging inside UK)  made payable to ‘EGS Old Boys Society’, to Steven Howarth, Ermysted’s Grammar School, Gargrave Road, Skipton, North Yorkshire, BD23 1PL or call in at The School Office, Ermysted’s Grammar School, Gargrave Road, Skipton, North Yorkshire, BD23 1PL. (Tel. 01756 792186)

On Parade

The Octagon Theatre

John Sutherland

Helen Parsons, Community & Information Officer, Skipton Library

 Author, Keith Taylor and Andrew Brooks

Volunteers John Richardson and Trevor Croucher - Website Workshops

'Last Post' played by Members of Skipton Royal British Legion Band

Stan Grosvenor (Chairman: Western Front Association, Cleveland) presents Chris Foster, Chairman of Craven Community Projects Group with a commemorative medal

Visitors and display stands

Pipe Major Jim Sharpe - 'Piper's Lament'