A.O.S.A. 2000 ANNUAL REPORT

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The response to my appeal for details about Tanner Jackson has not exactly been overwhelming, but the quality of the information received more than makes up for the quantity.

It appears from a book written by Ruth Gaudie (step-mother of Martyn, 1935-38) that the tannery known to have been situated to the south side of High Green in the 1600s was owned by the Martin family and that this area was sold to the school during the nineteenth century and incorporated into the grounds; our swimming pool was built on the site of the tannery pits using stones from the old swimming bath in Boil House Lane. Tanner Jackson's tannery, however, was situated in Yarm Lane, (over the stone bridge and straight on near to the Captain Cook's obelisk); so why, asks Wendy Smith (Arnold l959-65), who sent me the information, did he haunt us?

According to Ian Cornforth (l951-58), Dan O'Sullivan in “Great Ayton: a history of the village” - confirms that Martins owned the tanpits by the baths and the 1881 census mentions the Jackson brothers of the Tannery, Yarm Lane. Ian's father Stephen Cornforth (1913-15) used to talk about Tanner Jackson occasionally, although Ian is not sure whether the stories he told related to his own time at Ayton or whether they were experiences from his grandfather's time at the school (1888-90.) “Tanner Jackson used to cut all the boys' hair and was remembered for his habit of chewing tobacco at the same time as blowing away hair from newly exposed necks.”

Colin McLaurin-Jones - a former Rawdon pupil at Ayton from 1921-25 - remembers Frank Rivers Arundel (Ayton's third Head Master 1895-1913) in retirement “strolling round the school grounds followed two or three paces behind, by Squire Jackson who had something like Alzheimer's. He used to shuffle in a vacant sort of way, taking notice of nothing round about him: I think F. R. Arundel used to look after him for part of the day.”

Could “Squire” Jackson and the barber, “Tanner” Jackson be one and the same?

Wendy Smith, Dick Dennis and I recall being scared around Hallowe'en by tales of Tanner's activities. Wendy reports that: “on Hallowe'en he was supposed to take a girl from a particular bed in Bottom Dorm and tip her down the iron staircase (I think it ran from the girls' schoolroom to the Dining Room Ed.) Lettice Hall (1958-63) had bruises the following morning after spending Hallowe'en night in said bed.”

Rumour had it that Tanner Jackson drowned in the beck……. Chris Scaife (1965-94) remembered reading a story about Tanner Jackson which he thought came from a 1940s' Beckside. My appetite whetted, I borrowed Evelyn Nicholson's Becksides from Sue Fox (Turner 1965-71), their current custodian, and traced the story to the edition for the Autumn term of 1950: it was written by Gill Levy (Harker 1946-51) a literary giant of her day. Her version, which I have paraphrased, differs only slightly from the tale told to me by Chris Scaife….. Tanner Jackson was the village cobbler, he lived in a cottage at the foot of Roseberry Topping and worked very hard each day repairing the shoes for the villagers. In the evenings he could be seen with his bag of shoes on his back tramping around the countryside returning the shoes to their owners. The villagers were very fond of their cobbler, but he had one very worrying fault - he didn't believe in fairies.

Every night the rest of the villagers put out a bowl of milk and a slice of bread for Robin Goodfellow and the Little Folk, but not Tanner Jackson, he just laughed at their superstitions and went up his stairs to bed where he slept very soundly the whole night through. The villagers were much afraid that some evil would one day befall their friend.

On the evening of Hallowe'en, Tanner Jackson was busy about the village as usual delivering his sack of shoes when one of the villagers called out to him, “You had better believe in the little folk tonight good cobbler, for it is Hallowe'en, the Witches Sabbath, best to put out a bowl of cream for the Little Folk or you will be cursed for the rest of your life.” But Tanner Jackson just threw back his head and laughed and went about his business.

On the way back to his cottage, and as he neared the waterfall (there was one in the school grounds - near to the boys' bridge; there is another near to Suggitt's) in the moonlight he saw something lying on the ground, it was a roll of beautiful scarlet leather. Now Tanner Jackson knew that the leather must have been dropped by someone and that he had no right to take it, but it would make a wonderful pair of shoes and, looking carefully to right and to left, he picked up the roll and tucked it into his bag.

That night the cobbler spread out the leather in his workshop, cut it out and worked and stitched until the clock struck midnight, when, yawning, he laid down on his bench the most beautiful pair of long, pointed shoes. He then climbed up the stairs to bed and, as he usually did, slept soundly until the following morning. Later in the day Tanner Jackson picked up his bag full of the village folks' shoes and was almost out of the door when his eyes caught the new, red slippers. He put them on, they looked magnificent; perhaps he would just wear them to the end of the lane! But he started to dance and found that he could not stop. He danced down the lane and out into the village and across the green; as he danced past the villagers in their cottages, he had to throw their shoes to them for he could not stop………“The last person to see Tanner Jackson was the village lamp-lighter as he went on his rounds and he said the cobbler was dancing over the fields to the school beck. And in the morning, as the little children passed the waterfall, they found a large pair of long, pointed, scarlet shoes lying in the damp grass.”

Finally, I would like to include one or two excerpts from a ghost story written in the style of Montague Rhodes James, (1862-1936) linguist, palaeographer, medievalist, biblical scholar and writer of ghost stories - by Jean Shipley (Manship 1944-49) in which she details the Tanner Jackson tales told to her on a Hallowe'en many years ago as a very young boarder in “Top Dorm” which terrified her and which gave her many a disturbed night. “First, I must elucidate that the manifestations of the said Tanner Jackson were so diligently chronicled by more experienced members of our small and enclosed community, that when I was then a very junior scholar his wayward habit had been assiduously impressed  upon the subject's sensibilities long before the one guttering candle, provided for our frigid lodging, was extinguished in surrender to the great blackness that marked the cold and cheerless witching time! …..And so it was alleged, Tanner Jackson's nocturnal ghost was to depart his unquiet resting place that was the long, pinewood box kept secure in the domestic science room, to mount the cheerless stairway, lift the latch that granted access to our dank chamber and embrace the slim mattress of any unwary incumbent in the end truckle bed (shades of Lettice Hall and Bottom Dorm) and transport its somnolent charge to the margin of the old lake below.”

Now we know how he haunted the school, I wonder if we will ever solve the mystery of why; and where the legend came from in the first place?

Gill Jackson (Hinds 1950-55)

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