Among the many interesting characters in the history of Swaledale, one who stands out is Richard Alderson, known as Neddy Dick, of Keld, who lived from 1845 to 1926. A locally-revered, talented, and inventive musician, he was known especially for playing a harmonium that he augmented with an array of old clock bells, and for his home-made lithophone – a percussion instrument made of special sonic stones, fetched from the River Swale.
Research into the story of Neddy Dick was conducted in 2012 by SWAAG member Ric Carter with assistance from Christine Amsden, Marion Hearfield and members of the Upper Dales Family History Group, together with input from Bob Pegg, the nationally-known folk singer, songwriter, musician, and author, who has undertaken detailed studies into the folk music of the Yorkshire Dales. The account here is based on that research, now revised and rewritten by SWAAG member Will Swales. To jump to any section, click the links:
The family story
A contemporary account
A near-contemporary account
A heartrending tale
Later years and legacy
Origins of lithophones
A note on geology
The family story
Richard Alderson was a son of Edward and Ann Alderson, who farmed at the hamlet of Greens, between Keld and Angram in upper Swaledale. In that area, there were so many people with the same surname, especially that of Alderson, that it was a tradition to distinguish those with the same forenames by using nicknames, sometimes derived from the person’s parentage. It’s likely that this Richard ‘Dick’ Alderson was distinguished from other people called Richard Alderson by his being the son of Edward ‘Ned’ Alderson, and so became Neddy Dick Alderson, or Neddy Dick for short.
The family was quite wealthy. Press cuttings reveal that in 1844, Neddy Dick’s father, Edward Alderson, of Greens, and John Alderson, of Keld, offered for sale a freehold estate of 110 acres of meadow and pastureland, with a house, known as The Coach and Horses Inn, at Spittal in the parish of Bowes, together with an adjoining 33 acres of meadow fields, and unlimited rights of common on Bowes Moor. The census of 1851 described Edward Alderson, then aged 41, of Greens, as a proprietary farmer of 150 acres; proprietary meaning that he owned as well as occupied the land. He and his wife Ann had eight children, aged 19 to three. Richard ‘Neddy Dick’ was the second youngest, aged five, although he was recorded erroneously as aged eight. Edward Alderson died in December 1853, aged 43, leaving his widow Ann to continue running the farm with help from her older children.
Twenty-eight years later, the census of 1881 recorded that sometime in the previous 10 years, Ann Alderson and her children had moved from the farm at Greens to Keld Post Office, where Ann was then the 73-year-old postmistress as well as continuing to be responsible for a farm of 144 acres, presumably still the family farm, a mile along the road at Greens. Living with her in Keld were three unmarried children, Edward, 48, Richard ‘Neddy Dick’, 35 (although recorded as 33), and Eleanor, 30, all of them engaged in farmwork. Ann Alderson died in July 1886, aged 79. By the census of 1891, Neddy Dick was living alone in Keld, no-longer at the Post Office. He was aged 45 and single.
A contemporary account
The next we know of him is a report in the Northern Echo of 27 March 1900, written by B S Beckwith and headed: A ten days’ driving and walking tour in the north-west Yorkshire Dales. It included the following description: ‘Leaving Cat Hole about ten o’clock and passing through Keld, our attention is arrested by strains of sweet melody breaking the stillness of the Sabbath. Turning into a cottage, whence the sounds proceed, we find an old friend and one of the best dale residents, Neddy Dick, welcoming the sunny morn with sweet notes from his set of musical bells with harmonium accompaniment.
‘He is quite skilled in his art – with one hand striking the bells and with the other playing the accompaniment. We are not many minutes in his scrupulously-clean cottage when we are joined by a contingent of the Yorkshire Co-operative Holiday Association, who are present in summer quarters in this part of the dale. They bring hymn books, or perhaps I should say song books, and we soon have a good choir … We are invited to stay to morning devotional service, but our short stay at Keld prevents the acceptance of the kind invitation.’
A near-contemporary account
An insight into the musical talents of Neddy Dick at that time is found in a report about his life, attributed to EWC, in the Yorkshire Evening Post in May 1934, just eight years after the musician’s death. It described him as a man of ‘romantic and peculiar personality.’ The writer said: ‘The chief joy in Neddy Dick’s life was an old and battered harmonium, from which he was wont to draw stirring melodies and dales tunes, just for his own satisfaction. Night after night the sound of his music could be heard coming from the open door of his cottage. As the years went on, however, Neddy Dick felt that he needed another mode of expression for his musical instincts, and a strange and delightful instrument made its appearance by the side of the harmonium.
‘It consisted of a stand upon which were hung a score or more bells taken from grandfather clocks … It is known that Neddy Dick made nightly pilgrimages into the dale, armed with clock bells, and made exchanges with the farmers and cottagers. If Neddy had two bells of one note, he would try and exchange one of them with a neighbour; and there are told in Swaledale many amusing tales of haggles and protests in the farm kitchens … But Neddy Dick did not rest content … he began to search the brooks and streams of the dale in search of stones from which he might strike notes, and his range of musical stones became as famous as his bell instrument.’
A heartrending tale
No evidence has been found that Neddy Dick ever married. All census records show him as a single man. By the accounts of people who knew him, he was always a bachelor and a loner, reluctant to play music for anyone but himself and shy of his neighbours. That impression of his character is partly supported by an article about him that appeared in a newspaper in October 1907, when he was aged 62. The article expressed a remarkably heartrending tale about his loneliness but was also surprising in that it implied that he had once had the love of a woman and that she and their three children had all died.
It’s possible that such events, even without a marriage, had occurred in any of the 10-year periods between census records, but it seems unlikely. The story is evangelistic and has a strong sense of romantic invention that might have been conjured had it been written after Neddy Dick’s death. But it was published during his lifetime, which seems very odd if it was indeed an invention. Perhaps the writer heard of Neddy Dick and assumed he was a character from the past, about whom anything could be invented. For the sake of brevity, a slightly abridged version follows:
A child’s ministry, by GH, Bridlington Free Press, 18 October 1907
‘Neddy Dick was a puzzle to his neighbours. He lived by himself, his conversation seldom extending beyond a “good morning” in response to the salute of some passing villager. There was one, however, to whom Neddy opened himself out a little more; that was Mary Anderson [Alderson], the little girl who brought his halfpennyworth of milk every morning … It was the old man’s dog [Bruce] that brought the two together in their affections … When Mary appeared at the door, her [sick] canine friend, too weak to run to meet her, gave a tap, tap, tap with its tail upon the uncarpeted floor as it lay curled up by the side of the fire.
‘… A great event was to take place in the village … the Sunday School anniversary … Several children … were learning the various recitations and dialogues.’ [Asked to attend to hear the girl’s recitation, Neddy Dick replied:] “No, no, Mary, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t. I would love to hear you give your piece but no, I couldn’t.” Mary held up a commanding finger before a very serious face and retorted “But you can, and if you don’t, I won’t be your little sweetheart anymore, there.” With this threat she skipped away, leaving the old man in a dilemma.
‘… He had never been into a place of worship for over 20 years; he did not want to go now, but he dared not offend Mary. So, Sunday afternoon found him seated on a wooden bench in farmer Tindall’s barn, which had been cleaned out for the children’s service. Every eye was upon him and every mouth wide open with astonishment at the sight of the village puzzle so far forgetting itself as to attend a religious service … Mary’s [piece] was about heaven. It was entitled Mother gone before … The child’s simple faith in a Great Beyond gave a power to the delivery of her piece that broke open the long-closed seal of the old man’s emotions. His face was wet with tears.
‘After the service, he was walking slowly homewards with bent head when a cry of “Grandad! Grandad!” in the distance brought him to a standstill. On turning around, he saw Mary running towards him.
“Grandad,” she asked between her gasps for breath, “did you like my piece?”
“Yes, honey, it was a lovely piece; if only I could meet Lucy there; I know she’s there, I know she’s there.”
“What, grandad?” Mary asked in a softened tone.”
“Oh! Nothing, bairnie, nothing. It was a beautiful piece, a grand anniversary.”
“Grandad, didn’t you never have anyone to love you but me and Bruce?”
“Hush bairnie,” said the old man, as he took her hand and led her in silence to his home.
Closing the door after them, he pointed to a photograph of a woman on the mantlepiece, exclaiming: “Yes, bairnie, she loved me, and I loved her, but God took her and three bonny ones like you, and I took it hardly, vowing I would never go to chapel anymore. If only I could go to her, I’d never be lonely again, but it’s too late, too late.”
“No, no, grandad, it isn’t too late,” Mary remarked.
“Our teacher says if we’re sorry when we’ve done wrong, Jesus will forgive us. Let’s kneel and tell him about it.” She dropped upon her knees and piped out:
“Please, Jesus, grandad’s sorry he was vexed and left the chapel, and please when he dies, will you let him go and live with the lady in the photograph …” Slipping her arm around the old man’s neck, she gave him a kiss and was gone.
‘The following week she told him … “Oh grandad, I dreamed that I was sitting in chapel, and the door opened, and three little angels came in, and then a lady like the one in the photograph came in holding your hand, and you all came and sat in our pew, and Jack Waggit played the harmonium so grand … I wish you would come on Sunday and sit in our pew,” said Mary imploringly. Sunday morning found the chapel people again open-mouthed with astonishment to see Neddy Dick visit them a second time.
‘[The preacher] was nearing the end of his discourse when the sun broke out from behind a cloud [and] a ray shot through the window, illuminating the face of the old man. To him, through his tear-dimmed vision, it was a path of light leading to the Celestial City where, by faith, he saw [through] its portals the glorified vision of his three dear children, and one with a facial expression identical with that of the woman in the photograph.’
Later years and legacy
Nothing more has been found about the strange article in the Bridlington Free Press. The census of 1911 recorded the name of Neddy Dick’s house, in the centre of Keld, as Birkshill View, appropriately named for its aspect facing south-eastwards in the direction of the prominent Birk Hill. His occupation was recorded as farmer. By the next census, in 1921, he was still living in Keld but was then recorded as a retired farmer. Neddy Dick died on 2nd November 1926, aged 82, and was buried in Muker churchyard. His memorial stone is shared with that of his older brother, Edward.
By 1936, recollections in the Yorkshire Post about Neddy Dick reported that his harmonium, bells and musical stones had all disappeared after his death. This prompted a reader to declare that on a recent visit to Keld, about half a dozen of the stones had been seen built into a garden wall in the village. One Frank Metcalfe, of Keld, later confirmed that the outhouse that he believed had been Neddy Dick’s music room was pulled down and the stones, including some of the musical stones, were used to build the nearby wall. On inspection he was able to identify the stones in their new positions. One of them was removed and kept by a villager, although the identity of the new owner was not published. The evidence of the photographs on this page shows that Neddy Dick’s lithophone was installed outside his cottage. It seems more probable that it was dismantled and removed to the outhouse when Neddy Dick became too old and infirm to play it.
Inevitably, over time there would emerge some variations of the story of Neddy Dick, whether by false or second-hand memories, or expansions of the truth by the imaginings of later story tellers and writers, who couldn’t resist embellishment. In the 1960s, two Keld villagers committed to tape recordings their memories from forty or more years earlier of Neddy Dick as an old man. The recordings have been kindly supplied to this website by folk musician Bob Pegg, who at Leeds University, from 1966 to 1969, undertook postgraduate research into the folk music of the Yorkshire Dales.
In one recording, contributor Laurie Rukin mentioned that Neddy Dick lived on rent-income from his family’s land, supplemented by profits from a couple of cows and a few sheep that he kept in a field at Keld. Laurie Rukin spoke of persuading a very reluctant Neddy Dick to play a tune for him on his stones. In the other recording, an unidentified woman described Neddy Dick’s bells being suspended from an old tree branch. It’s possible that that was a later development. It was clearly not the case at the time of the photograph at the top of this page, apparently taken when Neddy Dick was in his middle years. The two recordings can be heard here:
Following on from these recordings, in 1970, at the height of the major folk-music revival of the period, Bob Pegg released a song, The Ballad of Neddy Dick, which was on an album Mr Fox, by Bob’s band of the same name. Allowing for a songwriter’s artistic licence, the song stated, inventively, that Neddy Dick had abandoned his farm to take up roving around the countryside. It repeated the memory that his bells were hung on an old tree branch, and created the romantic notion that at his death, his musical stones had been buried with him.
The following year, George Bernard Wood published a book, Yorkshire Villages, which introduced the idea that Neddy Dick had discovered the sonic characteristics of certain local stones by accident, when he dislodged one near Kisdon Force and heard a ‘distinct musical ring as it fell upon another rock.’ There is no earlier reference to this story, and so it smacks of a charming invention. Wood’s account of Neddy Dick also seems to have borrowed ideas from the story of an earlier, more-famous builder of a lithophone, in the Lake District, one Joseph Richardson (1792-1855). Over eight years in the 1840s, Richardson took his entirely more-sophisticated instrument, with Swiss bells attached (see below ‘Origins of lithophones’ by Jim Jack), on tours throughout the British Isles and the Continent.
Perhaps this inspired Wood to write of Neddy Dick: ‘He would sing to the accompaniment of his stones, and sometimes added a few bells for greater effect,’ and that Neddy Dick had an unfulfilled ambition to go on tour ‘with this melodic outfit piled into his donkey cart.’ As we know, Neddy Dick’s bells were attached to his harmonium, not his lithophone, and the idea of him performing on tour was not previously reported and seems to be in stark contradiction to what is known about his character. George Bernard Wood was not a historian. He was a professional photographer, best-known for his work during the Second World War for the National Buildings Record, documenting heritage buildings at risk of being bombed. His later books, including Yorkshire Villages, are said to provide insights into the architecture and landscapes of northern England.
More helpfully and almost-certainly more accurately, in 1973, Swaledale historian Edmund Cooper wrote in his A History of Swaledale that one Keld villager had said of Neddy Dick: “He wer a queer un. He wer brought up to farming: but his mind wer always running on music. He neglected ‘isself badly and though he had money he didn’t know how to use it. Lots o’ fowk came to hear him play on t’ stones he had fished up out o’ t’ beck”
In 1985, Bob Pegg and Julie Anne Fullarton featured Neddy Dick in a musical play, called Hand-to-Mouth, in which they collaborated as writers for the touring musical theatre company Big Bird. Based in part on recorded conversations with elderly people, such as those mentioned above, the play blended fact with fantasy in a colourful account of life in the Yorkshire Dales between the two world wars. It was played at more than 30 venues in the north of England before heading off for performances in New South Wales, Australia.
The Darlington-based folk band Fourum, which was formed in 1972 and entertained audiences throughout the north-east of England for 50 years before retiring, was best-known for writing and performing songs about the Yorkshire Dales. Their 2011 album The Dales Collection included a song called Neddy Dick. The lyric recalled George Bernard Wood’s idea that Neddy Dick discovered the sonic characteristics of certain stones by a happy accident, and that he had an ambition to take his lithophone on tour. The song expanded on the latter idea, declaring that Neddy Dick often performed on the stones at local shows and fairs, and that he had people dancing in the streets to his music. All OK for a song lyric but apparently far from the truth.
Origins of lithophones, by Jim Jack
One of the members of Fourum, Jim Jack, has kindly supplied the following potted history of the lithophone, which he explained had been used for centuries around the world in various shapes, long before Neddy Dick’s life. In England, the sonic qualities of certain rocks had been especially noted in the Lake District. Jim wrote: ‘Near Skiddaw, Peter Crosthwaite in 1785 began shaping flat rocks into different-length slabs and laying them horizontally to be struck like a xylophone. The largest and best-known lithophone had a range of eight octaves and was built by Joseph Richardson who called his instrument a harmonicon. He toured England extensively, as well as France, Germany and Italy, giving recitals, including one in 1848 for Queen Victoria. Today his instrument is still on view at Keswick Museum.
Jim Jack continued: ‘Another Skiddaw lithophone was commissioned by John Ruskin and is housed in the Ruskin Museum in Coniston. Coming from the same region was Daniel Till of Keswick, who moved to New Jersey with his two sons, James and William, and popularised the instrument there, touring the USA with The Till Family Rock Band. Before he emigrated, he also toured England and gave a performance at Crystal Palace in 1881. He is said to have spent 11 years building a five-octave lithophone, although the Till instrument found in the Metropolitan Museum, made from duplicate stones collected by Daniel Till at the same time, has only 22 stones and may be a touring model for greater mobility. Sadly, Neddy Dick never attained the same fame, his reputation being limited to the Dales.’
A note on geology, by John Russell
Metamorphic rocks, like those of Skiddaw used in Richardson’s lithophone above, make up only two per cent of the earth’s crust. They were formed by regional metamorphism, when continents collided, and sedimentary rocks were put under great heat and pressure. The clays and silts of Skiddaw were squashed into slates when two halves of our country joined at the end of the Silurian Period. Granites were injected into the crustal junction causing contact metamorphism.
The rock surrounding the granite was baked at 600-700 degrees centigrade. Rings of metamorphic rock change, called Aureoles, surrounded the granite, with the lowest temperature rocks furthest from the granite, and the highest-grade rock (hornfels) closest to the granite. The original slate, closest to the granite, was baked at these very high temperatures for about a million years, destroying the slate structure and crystals. The hornfels that formed were made of small, interlocking uniform crystals, described as granoblastic. It is likely that the uniform crystal texture gives the rock its ringing sound when struck with a hammer.
