To my mind the prettiest village is Newmillerdam, four miles from Wakefield. The scenery is in the village, not outside . . .
In summer people are allowed to walk round the lake, and admire the beautiful trees and ferns and flowers. In winter, when everything is covered with snow, and skaters are gliding along the lake, which is about a mile in length, it is a picture worth painting.”
Florence E. R. Clark, letter to the Leeds Mercury, 10 August 1907
British Newspaper Archive
Newmillerdam was ‘the ice skaters’ mecca in the Wakefield district’, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post, in January 1946, but they warned that although the surface was strong, it was ‘far from smooth’.
Spare a thought for the Chevet Estate gamekeepers, George Stephenson and William Mellor, who in October 1870 spotted a familiar trio of poachers – Henry Smith, Alfred Grace and William Crowther – in the Boathouse Plantation, sending a ferret down a rabbit hole. While Smith ran away, Crowther picked up a stone to strike the keepers with. They admitted poaching but said that they’d go to Sir Lionel Pilkington and ask to be let off. At Wakefield Court House, they were fined £2 each plus costs or two months imprisonment.
£2 in 1870 would be equivalent to £220 today.