1 - Hannah Hauxwell - Too Long A Winter - 1972

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hannah Hauxwell (1 August 1926 - 30 January 2018) was an English farmer who was the subject of several television documentaries. She first came to public attention after being covered in an ITV documentary, Too Long a Winter, made by Yorkshire Television and produced by Barry Cockcroft, which chronicled the almost unendurable conditions of farmers in the High Pennines in winter.
A Yorkshire Post article published in April 1970 chronicled the daily life of Hauxwell, then 44, as she worked alone in her family home, Low Birk Hatt Farm, a dilapidated 80-acre (32 ha) farm in Baldersdale, west of Cotherstone, in the North Riding of Yorkshire (since 1974 in County Durham). She had run the farm by herself since the age of 35 following the deaths of her parents and uncle. With no electricity or running water and struggling to survive on £240-280 a year (at a time when the average annual salary in the UK was £1,339), life was a constant battle against poverty and hardship, especially in the harsh Pennine winters, when she had to work outside tending her few cattle in ragged clothes in temperatures well below freezing.
"Too Long a Winter"
In the summer of 1972, Hauxwell was discovered by a friend of a researcher at Yorkshire Television while out walking in the Yorkshire Dales. The researcher contacted Barry Cockcroft, a producer at the company, who proposed to make a TV documentary tentatively entitled The Hard Life. The documentary started with her leading a cow into a shed during a blizzard in Baldersdale. After the documentary was first shown in 1972, Yorkshire TV's phone line was jammed for three days with viewers wanting to find out more and help her. ITV received hundreds of phone calls and mail containing gifts and money for “the old lady in the Yorkshire Dales”. A local factory raised money to fund getting electricity to Low Birk Hatt Farm, and she continued to receive thousands of letters and donations from well-wishers around the world.