THE CHEERY FACE WHICH CAPTURED THE NATION’S HEARTS
HANNAH HAUXWELL (1926-2018) was emblematic of the tough, resourceful upland farmers of North Yorkshire and County Durham. Having run her family farm, Low Birk Hatt in Baldersdale, since the death of her parents and uncle when she was 35, Hannah lived a life of unmodernised poverty and hardship.
With no electricity or running water, daily life was a struggle on an annual income of less than £200. Deliveries of bread, milk and groceries were left on a wall three fields away. Unmarried and alone, she once remarked: “In summer I live and in winter I exist”.
Hannah was “discovered” in 1972, when Yorkshire Television made a documentary about her daily life titled “Too Long a Winter”. Broadcast nationally, it touched the hearts of many and Hannah became a national heroine.
Aside from hundreds of letters and donations – so many that a helicopter was chartered to fly them in to her – one local business raised money to pay for electricity to be installed in the isolated smallholding.
Well-wishers donated a cooker and a kettle.
More documentaries and books followed her on her first ventures to London and abroad until she left her beloved farm to move to nearby Cotherstone in 1988.
Aside from her quilts, Hannah’s other legacy is the part of Birk Hatt that was later designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
It is now a nature reserve named Hannah’s Meadow.