Museum publishes Kit Calvert recordings

‘King of Wensleydale’ Kit Calvert is the subject of three new episodes of the Dales Countryside Museum’s Voices From The Dales podcast.

The new episodes bring to an end Series Two on dialect and include Kit Calvert recordings that have never before been broadcast.  

The three 15-minute programmes are titled ‘Wass than nowt’, ‘Wily old bird’ and ‘Lord, do somemat f’t’cow’.  They reveal how Wensleydale dialect made the Queen Mother smile; how dialect had a central role in the national success of Wensleydale cheese; and how Kit entered a dispute with the local angling association.

Episodes 7-9 of Series Two on dialect – presented by Andrew Fagg and featuring special guest Rob Ward, both from Hawes – are available to listen on all podcast platforms or via the museum’s website.  The episodes have been supported financially by the charity, Friends of the Dales Countryside Museum. 

Derek Twine, who is the Member Champion for Promoting Understanding at the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, which runs the Dales Countryside Museum, said:  “In 2019 we received a donation of cassette tapes from the family of the late John and Myra Moore.  On one tape is a deeply moving interview with Kit Calvert.   Together with recently digitised reel-to-reel tapes from the 1970s, gifted to the museum by Trevor Sharpe in 2014, we realised we had a great store of recordings of a man who in his own lifetime was called ‘The Complete Dalesman’ and ‘The King of Wensleydale’.   So it made sense to extend ‘Series Two on dialect’ of our Voices From The Dales podcast to finish with three episodes dedicated to him.

“As well as being the great promoter of Wensleydale cheese, he was a passionate advocate of the Wensleydale dialect. The engaging recordings by Kit Calvert himself range from revealing to us some of his business acumen through to his unusual conversion to Christianity and the healing of a milk cow. Of particular listening pleasure was hearing him read from his Wensleydale dialect translation of St John’s Gospel, and from the poetry of John Thwaite – sheer delight.”

The first six episodes of Voices From The Dales Series Two on dialect were published last winter, as described in our news release on 27 February.