THREE former landladies of Britain’s highest – and most remote – pub, are to gather there for the first time next week (Monday 20 October) to record their memories.
One of them, Audrey Yeardley, was just 25 when she and husband David Clifford took over the tenancy of the 17th century Tan Hill Inn, on the windswept North Yorkshire Moors, at Keld, in 1960.
Now aged 90, she will travel from her home in Fife to revisit the pub, on Monday 20 October – and relive an event which made headlines across the UK.
The Tan Hill Inn sits 1732ft above sea level and around four miles from any habitation and, just after Christmas 1962, it started to snow.
In what became known as The Great Winter – it didn’t stop snowing until the end of March 1963.
And, with two young sons, aged six and three, Audrey and David were trapped in their pub with no electricity, no telephone and no running water for 13 weeks and one day.
Snow ploughs were battling eight miles through 20ft drifts to reach the isolated pub, where David was melting snow for his young family to drink and to wash with.
And local farmers and groups of soldiers would take advantage of occasional breaks in the weather to bring home made sausages, bread and milk and chocolate for the boys.
“I wept afterwards at their kindness,” said Audrey. “And just a week before the first successful attempt by a snow plough to get through, we heard the whirring of a hovering helicopter above us, trying to find a place to land.
“Its pilot brought a policeman with him who had been urged to find out what was happening to our family when the helicopter was dropping hay for the sheep.
“He had done some shopping and he dropped it down to us. And, when the thaw eventually came, on the 2 or 3 of April and our first customer in months came in, we wished him Happy New Year.”
Audrey will be joined on Monday by fellow former landlady Sue Hanson, who took over the tenancy with husband Neil in 1978 and by Louise Peace, who moved there with husband Mike in 2005.
Also, there will be Kimberley Baines, whose childhood was spent at Tan Hill Inn after her parents Alex and Margaret bought the pub in 1985, staying for 20 years.
And the aim of the once in a lifetime reunion is to ensure their memories are preserved in an archive tracing the history of the pub, now owned by Andrew Hields.