Of Cabinets and Things
No prizes for guessing what usually happens next. Such places in the Yorkshire Dales bring out the squinty-eyed property developer in many a vendor, as carving old farms up into pathetically tiny lots offers rich pickings. Too often, planning consents are sought to turn dairy, barn, pigsty and stables into accommodation, which means second homes for the retired and a price tag beyond the reach of young people on local wages. Not this time.
A gold star to Grange Farm's owner, who sold to his sister and brother-in-law, Georgina and Sam Anderson. After renovating the house, the couple added two further bedrooms to the existing three and swiftly turned the single-storey outbuildings into workshops for Sam's bespoke furniture business. As a result, the village has a brand new young family with two children under five and, although Grange Farm isn't a farm any more, it retains its integrity as a vibrant workplace.
Not only is Anderson, 36 self-taught; he is also self-effacing to a fault. He admits that he has "always had a bit of a feeling for wood", but apart from an NVQ1 in carpentry and joinery, he has no formal qualifications, nor has he studied under any well-known cabinet-maker, which makes his wholly original furniture all the more remarkable.
"I guess I extrapolated the direction of my work from books," he says, running his fingers down the spine of two bibles, The Complete Woodworkers Manual and The Complete Manual of Wood Veneering "I only started my veneer work when we moved here from Devon. It gives me access to a whole range of different qualities and moods." He held his first major exhibition in May in Wensleydale. "It went very well and I took several orders. I think Yorkshire is still making up its mind about commissions, and I'm still getting fresh enquiries out of the blue as a result three months later," he says.
Planks of walnut, yew, elm and oak are stacked up outside the workroom. Left outside to dry for a year for every inch of thickness, much of this timber grew locally and some is here with specific commissions in mind. "Much of this was blown down in storms in 2001 and so some people have at last found a use for it. I guess it's a special feeling to have something made from a tree that was, so to speak, growing in your back garden." In a corner of his workroom, two delicate walnut side tables, inlaid with burr elm and satin wood, are almost finished. "I made them for either side of a chimney breast." For a bespoke, workaday refectory table in oak or ash made to your own dimensions, expect to pay around 2,500, while a finer-grained dining table - often inlaid with stone, marble or leather - could be as much as 20,000. "Most of the work is to order so I've only a few off-the-shelf pieces that don't yet have a customer. Right now, I've a marble-topped walnut side-table with spade feet and a curved footrest for 1,995," he says.
His most ambitious project has been a kitchen at Bolton Hall, in Wensley. "It's made living in a house of this size much more pleasurable and has brought it into the 21st century," says Pip Bolton, who ordered four pieces from Anderson: a kitchen table made of oak from a tree on her estate that blew down in a storm in 2005, and three walnut-framed, freestanding kitchen cabinets, each inlaid with intricate patterns of burr elm and ash.
Enterprises like Sam's help give a community identity and focus, and also provide rare jobs - Sam employs two others. This in turn underlines a need for more affordable housing to be made available in villages.
East Witton buzzes. It has an award-winning gastropub, a Post Office and shop, a village room, tennis court, an annual fete, fell race, and bonfire. Quoits are played on the green through the summer. About 150 live here, a mix of natives and incomers; most embrace village life. Around half of the houses still belong to Georgina's brother, and several are home to estate workers past and present.
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