Thread by @TripeUK

Yorkshire - God's Own Country (THREAD)
by Dr Eric K Shipley

Thanks to the sterling work of the small, independent publishing house Yorkie Books, few Yorkshire readers can be unfamiliar with the works of the best-selling author Erich von Kruppenheim.

Untroubled by any considerations relating to accuracy, von Kruppenheim amassed a small fortune in the 60s and 70s by peddling his controversial notion that God was a Yorkshireman, the evidence for which had been researched by his own Yorkshire family for generations.(1)

During his travels across the county, von Kruppenheim had chanced upon a pyramidal structure in the grounds of Castle Howard, the ancestral home of the Howard family. Puzzled as to why such a construction had been built in Yorkshire, he immediately set about discovering why.

He suggested that the pyramid, which sat on a ridge to the south of the house, had once been used by early inhabitants of the county to worship ancient gods.(2) But who were these gods, and where were they from? Answering these conundrums became von Kruppenheim's lifelong goal.

It was not long afterwards that von Kruppenheim became fascinated by a vast network of primative footpaths and roads that traversed North Yorkshire and which locals called The James Herriot Trail.

Even centuries after they were first constructed, the paths continued to draw Yorkshire folk like a magnet, taking in such places as Reeth, Keld, Hawes, Aysgarth and Castle Bolton.

Whilst exploring the area, he stumbled on a set of ruined pillars close to Reeth, and soon became convinced that they formed part of an intricate and mysterious pattern of monuments and objects that were linked to the worship of the gods.(3)

The stone pillars at Reeth were erected in a long avenue, and von Kruppenheim posited that, when viewed from their western approach, they would line up with the sunrise every year on 1st August.

Furthermore, a line drawn due west from the avenue almost perfectly aligned with the apex of Whitby Abbey (using only minor adjustments that allowed for plate tectonics and continental drift).

But this was a blind alley - there were no further clues to be had as the line continued out into the North Sea, not reaching land until Denmark, which von Kruppenheim discounted as a highly unlikely home for a god of any description, even allowing for plate tectonics.

The mapping of the ancient pathways and monuments of Yorkshire soon became an obsession for von Kruppenheim.

But it wasn’t until he had studied his plans for many more months, drawing countless lines across them to bisect places in the hope they might reveal more clues to the mystery, that he finally discovered the answer.

Taking a line from the Pyramid at Castle Howard and tracing it directly to Reeth, he noticed that the path took him through a small market town that was almost equidistant (allowing for continental drift) between the two. The answer had been staring him in the face all along.

Those who were following the James Herriot Trail were wrong - it was to Thirsk, where a separate group of worshippers regularly gathered to acclaim their god - that he must look.

Here, in an unassuming terraced house at 23, Kirgkgate was the home of the man who many proclaimed to be God - and he was a Yorkshireman. Von Kruppenheim basked in his discovery for many years, earning a small fortune from books and TV appearances.

It was only when an enterprising researcher from the north east discovered that James Herriot, author, veterinary surgeon and acclaimed Yorkshire God, had in fact been born in Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, that the glitter began to fall off von Kruppenheim's career.

But not before he had published another book, The Black Gold of the Gods. Here, von Kruppenheim describes an expedition he undertook through man-made tunnels within the South Ossett district, ably assisted by a local guide named Arthur Bland.(4)

He reported seeing mounds of coal, strange wooden roof supports and the remains of a primitive transport system relying on iron rails. He argued that a network of similar tunnels all across South Yorkshire were evidence of an ancient civilisation that worshiped coal.

Bland subsequently told The Leeds Examiner that there had been no expedition; von Kruppenheim’s descriptions came from “a long conversation”, and the photos in the book had been “fiddled”.

During a 1974 TV interview with Michael Parkinsharp, von Kruppenheim asserted that he had indeed seen the tunnels, but he had embellished some aspects of the story to make it more interesting.

“In Germany, they say a writer, if he is not writing pure science, is allowed to use some ... theatrical effects,” he said. “And that’s what I have done.”

Four years later, he admitted that he had fabricated the entire tunnel adventure, although geologists have since confirmed the existence of many abandoned coal mines in the area.

Footnotes
1. Erich von Kruppenheim’s father was a German pilot who had been taken prisoner when his Messerschmitt was shot down over Stokesley during WWII. It was whilst working in the fields of North Yorkshire that he met his wife, Nora von Darlington.

His claim, therefore, that he had Yorkshire lineage was a typically boisterous one, ignoring as it does the fact that Darlington is on the wrong side of the Tees, and in County Durham.

2. This theory was not comprehensively debunked until 2003, when Dr. Bernice Maidenhoff, Visiting Lecturer in Pyramid Sales at Leeds University, excavated the structure, revealing that it contained a vast store of decomposing aloe vera.

3. Industrial archeologists, geographers and most sane people lined up to dispute von Kruppenheim’s theory, but it only emboldened him in his study.

Even when it was revealed that the stone pillars belonged to a store for peat used to fire the furnaces for the smelting of lead ore at the nearby Old Gang Mill.

The stone pillars would have supported a heather thatched roof under which peat, cut from the nearby moors, was stored, the open sides aiding the drying of the peat. I am sincerely indebted to Dr. W.I. Kipedia of the University of the Bleedin' Obvious for this information.

4. Bland was a member of the 6th Ossett Guides between 1968 and 1971, a time when few but the more enlightened guiding branches would accept boys into their midst.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this extract from Dr Eric K Shipley's Forgotten Yorkshire and Parts of North Derbyshire and Humberside - available from @TMB_Books and via Amazon. amazon.co.uk/dp/0993407552/

Look out for Part 2 of Yorkshire - God's Own Country soon.

Unroll, please, oh @threadreaderapp!

s/p 'primitive'