The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang

£8.495
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The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang

The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang

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Price: £8.495
£8.495 FREE Shipping

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Working with Shane as an adult now, I think it’s totally different in the sense that you can’t get away with the things that you got away with as a kid, it just doesn’t work like that. When I told my Dad that I was doing this, one of the first things he said to me was ‘make sure you go and make Shane know you’re not just that little kid anymore, that you’ve grown in to a respectable man (ish) – I’m a new parent, I’m married now – and I’d like to think that I take the craft quite seriously now, so I just wanted to show Shane and people who are watching the show as well, that I’m willing to put work in to things and hopefully Shane seems happy with everything I’m doing. So yeah it has been different working with Shane as a man as opposed to being a kid. Stevie Binns The first reports of coining in the area were made in August 1767. A John Greenwood from Halifax had been arrested in Hamburg for coining and in his statement claimed to have learnt the practise from James Johnson, a Smith from Wadsworth.

As with all Meadows stuff, the cinematography is magnificent, particularly that of the eye-misting scene in which William Sr is buried on the hillside. The modern and trad folk score is haunting, particularly Barb's a capella laments at William Sr's wake. The genuine coins would be filed down to remove evidence of clipping while the counterfeit coins would be minted to resemble French, Spanish and Portuguese coins. European coins were accepted as legal tender at the time due to a shortage of Royal Mint coins in circulation. Piers Wenger, Director of BBC Drama, adds: “Shane’s talent for spotting and working with the newest and most authentic talent is second to none and will play a key role in setting this drama apart. It’s an honour to be working with Shane, our friends at Element, and our partners at A24, to see this amazing story start to come to life.”Shane Meadows, writer and director, on his vision: I really wanted to delve into the history of this story and the circumstances that lead to an entire West Yorkshire community risking their lives to put food in their children’s bellies. Read next:• Life in the remote and unspoilt 'forgotten' Yorkshire village that really is a hidden treasure They clipped and filed the edges of gold coins and return the clipped coins to circulation. Then they used the gold collected from several coins to cast blanks and stamp new coins using skilfully made dies. The new coins, usually Portuguese Moidores, were then put into circulation and as a result the Coiners made a healthy profit. Hartley seems to have been an enigmatic individual. With him as ringleader, the activity spread to other families at nearby Hill Top Farm and Keelham Farm, forming the beginnings of a gang of dozens of individuals; the Cragg Vale Coiners. Hartley became known as ‘King David’ Hartley and local publicans helped the gang by placing the counterfeit coins into circulation.

David Hartley, who lived at a farm called Bell House, was the leader of the gang. He was married to Grace Sutcliffe in 1764. In 2023 a stage play, The Coiner's Wife, about the Cragg Vale Coiners was written by Maurice Claypole as part of the 37 Plays project instigated by the Royal Shakespeare Company and published in February 2023. [8] [9] It focuses on the story of Grace Hartley, wife of "King" David Hartley. According to a synopsis, [9] the play presents the events from a woman's point of view. Working with Shane is like swimming in the ocean, in the sense that it’s limitless. It’s so open and terrifying, because you’re given so much room to explore, to take a risk. That’s very rare and also Shane puts a lot of trust in you, he invites you to decide what your personal investment is and to decide what matters to your character and where do you want to go and that very generous invitation, it gives you a lot as a performer, and not just as a performer, but also as a person, so you ask yourself what matters to me and what am I wanting to explore here and what am I bringing to this and what is this other person bringing and what are we making together. I think that’s just a gift really. Adam Fogerty It is the duality of the Coiners – they were Robin Hood-like community saviours and yet greedy, murderous thugs – that makes them fascinating.Collaborating again with casting director Shaheen Baig (The Virtues), Shane Meadows says of his cast: “Putting this cast together, with the undying support of Shaheen Baig and her amazing team, has been an absolute joy. To be working with actors I’ve grown up with and/or have been desperate to work with, alongside oodles of incredible ‘as yet’ undiscovered Yorkshire-based talent, is an absolute honour and I’ve not been this passionate about shooting a project in years! During this time, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, and the textile industry dominated the Calder Valley. However, the workers faced abysmal working conditions and low wages, struggling to make a decent living. In response to their dire circumstances, a group of individuals, including David Hartley, devised a plan to take matters into their own hands. It's a fascinating true story adapted for the screen by one of Britain's greatest contemporary directors and it features a stellar cast. But is The Gallows Pole – a prequel to Benjamin Myers' novel of the same name – worth the sum of its golden parts? YorkshireLive writer Dave Himelfield thinks so. Here's his review of Episode One. Bankfield Museum in Halifax has a display featuring some of the original dies used by the Coiners to stamp their gold discs into coins, as well as panels telling more of their story. Bankfield Museum has FREE entry and is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am – 4pm (closed Sundays and Mondays). Isaac was buried in a grave alongside his brother David in the village of Heptonstall, above Hebden Bridge. David Hartley’s grave is often easily identified by a number of coins left on it by visitors to the cemetery.

The chances of discovery were made even more remote by the fact that during the 18th century, England had no public officials corresponding to the modern day Police. Constables were unpaid and played only a minor role in law enforcement. Halifax, seven miles away, had only two Constables and two Deputy Constables and the nearest Magistrate was fourteen miles away in Bradford. The Coiners, led by 'King' David Hartley of Cragg Vale, near Hebden Bridge, obtained officially minted coins from bent officials, including the Deputy Constable of Halifax, Joseph Hanson. The gang would clip the edges of the coins, which was itself a capital offence, and use the clippings mixed with base ores to produce new coins.The genuine coins would be filed down to remove evidence of clipping while the counterfeit coins would be minted to resemble French, Spanish and Portuguese currency. European coins were accepted as legal tender at the time due to a shortage of Royal Mint coins in circulation.

In 2017 the story was fictionalised by Benjamin Myers in the Walter Scott Prize winning historic novel The Gallows Pole and has more recently been developed into a dramatisation for television by renowned british director Shane Meadows for the BBC. The multi-episode television series is expected to air in 2023.In 1769, William Dighton (or Deighton), a public official, investigated the possibilities of a counterfeiting gang in Cragg Vale. A coiner by the name of James Broadbent betrayed the gang by turning King's evidence and revealing the gang's existence and operations to authorities. Dighton had Hartley arrested. The scenery of the Calder Valley, much like some of its attitudes, has largely remained untouched since Hartley was alive. "This area has not changed an awful lot since those days," said Tilston. "This is where Hartley and his cohorts would have trudged. They would have looked out at the same views as we do today." Up in Yorkshire in the 1760s, the industrial revolution was steaming ahead at full pelt. The rich were getting richer, through the building of cotton mills and factories, while the poor grew poorer. Suffering ensued. There was great poverty, especially in the area of Cragg Vale, near Hebden Bridge, which was populated by weavers, land-workers and their families. But Hartley was smart. Taking advantage of his formidable local reputation, as long as everyone around him was benefitting financially, his enterprise was relatively secure. As Myers writes, “the valley folk mythologised this gang leader whose behaviour they saw no harm in, so long as there was food on their tables and logs in their log stores”. When I first read the scriptments, it was so exciting. As Sam said, there’s a very strong sense of Shane’s voice and his humour coming through, but I was also really attracted to the story of these people, their resourcefulness, their shrewdness, their tenacity to survive. And to me the story seems so relevant to now, to today. Coming out of this pandemic, the story of structures that are oppressive and exploitative and people finding a way to survive living within those and the gap between the haves and the have-nots. The first time I read the scriptments they felt so current and important, it didn’t feel like an old story to me, it felt like a story of today.



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