Yeadon Dam
Twenty stories that made The Famous Town of Yeadon.
Day 2- You need to know four things about this epic expanse of water.
A- It gave the town its name. Yea derives from the French word for water don is the Saxon word for hill.
B- It had been a very large moorland pond but in the 1930s unemployed men were hired to enclose the perimeter and create paths and a recreation ground.
C- it is commonly believed to be exactly a mile in circumference and so was used by charities in the 1960s and 1970s for sponsored walks. When me and the rest of the 16th Airedale Scout Troop did a twenty circuit walk in 1970, an old man refused to pay up for the full 20 miles as the distance of each lap was only seven eighths of a mile. This issue did really explode and ended up in the local paper.
D- Its name is contested. No person born in the town would ever call it The Tarn, but the impure incomers do. And that marks the buggers out. A second group of late middle aged men with beards have recently taken to calling it Yeadon Moor Dam. They get tithe maps out etc etc The proper name is simply Yeadon Dam
Its a mark of the place that everyone of those facts have been argued about since I was a boy. This is the place that have seen street brawls over the proper names for clouds.
My last fact is not contested its in my multiple great grandfathers journal. As an 8 year old John Yeadon was sent by his grandmother to bath in the dam. All the town people did the same. The year was 1772. John lost his footing and slid under the water and came close to drowning. As a consequence of that near drowning John became convinced that he had to become a Methodist Minister which did at age 30. He conducted service on a circuit covering villages in the Aire and Wharfe valleys for almost 40 years. And of course he had a son called Joseph who ended up in debtors prison at York but who also begat a line of descendants that led to me. Which is a good thing.
NB. We launched a 'Famous Town of Yeadon' Facebook page to carry on the ten year campaign to change the towns name from Yeadon to The Famous Town of Yeadon. Just search for it on Facebook and like. Scores of people have already done just that.
There lots of fun free content there including an Iconic Tunes of Yeadon feature everyone is free to add to.
MAY THE FAMOUS TOWN OF YEADON BE WITH YOU.
