Step Back in Time

The Bronte village of Haworth is turning back the clock to the 1940s again in May, and the team at Craven Valley Life and Northern Life magazine will be there. While you’re there soaking up the sights and sounds of wartime Britain, why not call round at Central Park and meet the team?

We’ll have copies of our latest magazines on sale, we’ll have goodies to give away, and we’d love to chat with you about what you think of Northern Life, the people’s magazine for Lancashire and Yorkshire.

As regular readers know, we love to feature stories, poems, memories and photographs from our readers, so please feel free to bring them along in person. This year’s 1940s Weekend on Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th May promises to be better than ever, and as always it will be a charitable event organised by the community.

Spivs and ‘honest’ street vendors ply their wares amongst the rows of military and period vehicles, while street entertainers recapture the music and performances of the time. As usual, the ever popular market stalls in Haworth Central Park (Entertainers Park) and the Parsonage Car Park (Normandy Beach) will be set up offering a wide range of goods, food and souvenirs.

Central Park will play host to a number of re-enactors and living exhibitions, together with battle skirmishes. It will also be host to the ‘Pegasus Bar’, a large licensed marquee hosting a number of events across the weekend.

Parsonage Car Park will be home to ‘Y Station’, a listening station receiving messages for dispatch to ‘Station X’ for code breaking. There will also be the popular Spitfire plane on display together with a collection of other interesting exhibitions and stalls.

The weekend will also feature a series of tributes to the brilliant brains at the Bletchley Park decoding centre, whose work cracking German military codes are believed to have shortened the war by two years. There will be a screening of the film ‘Codebreaker’, about the life and work of computer genius Dr Alan Turing. Kevin Murrell, Director of the National Museum of Computing, will deliver a talk on the rebuild of Colossus, the pioneering computer at the famous Bletchley Park decoding centre, and technical wizard Tommy Flowers who built it.

Visitors in cars are being advised to let the train take the strain instead and travel to Haworth 1940s-style behind a steam locomotive. The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, one of the locations for the celebrated war film Yanks, will once again enter the spirit of 1940s Weekend, and there will park-and-ride at Keighley, Ingrow West and Oxenhope stations. The whole weekend is for a good cause, too, the SSAFA (Soldiers Sailors Airmen and Families Association) which is the UK’s oldest Tri-Service Military Charity.

Last year’s event raised a whopping £19,000.00 for the charity, which offers lifelong support to Britain’s armed forces and their families. Each year, their trained staff and network of 7,500 volunteers provide practical support and assistance to more than 50,000 people, from D-Day veterans to young soldiers wounded in Afghanistan.

For information go to www.haworth1940sweekend.co.uk.