Grace Rutherford Transcript

Barnsley Museums · Grace Rutherford Oral History Interview, August 2025

Steven Skelley (SS) interview with Grace Rutherford (GW) on Friday 1 August 2025

Abstract

Grace Rutherford fondly recalls her time living at Worsbrough Mill in the 1980s, where her husband Jim Woods was curator and she played an active, though unofficial, role in supporting the mill’s operations and community engagement. The mill served as both a heritage site and a community hub, hosting educational visits, artisan fairs, and even wildlife rescues, all while maintaining traditional milling practices. Grace’s memories highlight the mill’s enduring significance as a place of learning, belonging, and continuity for generations in Barnsley.

It’s a lovely day on the 1st of August 2025 at Worsbrough Mill, Barnsley. The mill is a peaceful place steeped in history and a little mystery, all surrounded in a big hug of nature. (I wrote that last night) Powered by the sleepy River Dove, the mill is surrounded by a 240 acre Country Park, we're here today celebrating the mills heritage and birthday and lucky to be speaking to Grace Rutherford, who has many memories of the mill to share. Grace lived at the mill in the 1980s and her husband was the curator, and that's Jim Woods.

So my name is Steven Skelley from Barnsley Museums. So good morning, Grace. Thank you for agreeing to have this chat with us here at the mill today.

Good morning. I'm Grace Rutherford I was brought up in York. I'm 73 years old. I moved around, but we ended up here at the mill in 1983, in the January when my husband, then husband Jim became curator through South Yorkshire County Council and we had a very good time here. Jim was the curator, so he did the milling, he did the engineering. I've been working before I came here so I became a mum for a couple of years, because I'd never been I've always worked when the girls were little, but I also used to do odd helping out here and there when things needed an extra person's hands. So although I didn't get paid and I got told off quite a few times for doing things that we shouldn't. I helped out when when was needed.

So Grace, you and Jim were the mill family. Could you tell me the girl's names and and and also the the dogs?

We had Jenny and Colette, who were twins, and they were they were 5 1/2 when we came here and we had a dog called Toby. If anyone ever was here around that time they would remember Toby. He was a funny looking poodle and he had a great friend in a dog called Radar who was a a large Alsatian that as soon as Radar came down the lane, he'd be out at the the back door saying let me out, let me out on Radar’s here. I'm going for a walk with him. So I'd lose him for a few hours while they were out.

So that's the real mill family. And you lived here right in the very heart of the mill. The historic mill buildings. And now we're upstairs in in what is the, the office upstairs. But could you tell me what this room was? When, when you were here in the 1980s?

Yes. In the 1980s, this was our bedroom, which was a very large bedroom and very nice and and then down the corridor opposite there was the girls bedroom on one side and a very, very large bathroom on the other side. Down the other bits of the corridor there was two bedrooms as well, so we had family. People could come and visit us, which was quite nice as well.

And we've just been for a cuppa downstairs and we've seen that the the kitchen of the Millers Cafe. It was your kitchen and then the the main room of the cafe, there was your living room and you and you mentioned there was a big fridge down by where this is?

Oh yeah, underneath the stairs there was a big freezer. Well, there's a big fridge freezer now. That was an interesting thing because Phil's the Chief Ranger here, used to use my fridge freezer as a storage for dead animals.

Oh lovely.

Because he used to send them to taxidermist, but they had to be kept, you know, kept. So I used to put them in my freezer. And then at the back here, he used to have them displayed across the back.

As taxidermy?

That's taxidermy.

And with this, wildlife from the park at the time?

All came from the park, so we had a badger, had a badger in the freezer once that was interesting because Jillian, the reservoir kepeer wife, had come over to borrow some chips off me and I'd forgotten the badger was in the freezer. And I said, oh, go help yourself. She knew she we used to swap things all the time and all of a sudden you heard screams and “Oh I forgot the badger was in there!” I walked in, lifted the badger out put him back in. She said, what is a badger doing in your freezer? I said don't ask. He's fine, I said.

It's the way the mill was back then.

Yeah. And we had a hedgehog in there once and I told Phil that he never had to put a hedgehog in there again because the hedgehog was dead but the fleas on it weren't. So when you opened the lid, the fleas were trying to get away. We had the Hornsby bulb engine which wasn't working when we came here.

So this is a steam engine, so it was water powered then.

Yeah, my husband, Jim, was an engineer, mechanical engineer, and he was very keen on getting it going. And we did get it going. But you had to jump on the flywheel to get it going and we were running it and everything else. And then a health and safety man happened to be wandering around with his children. So what were we doing? I went back and went, you can't do that! Eventually they put in an electric thing to to push the button so that it would set it up, start it up, which disappointed everybody because everybody used to love jumping on the wheel and getting it going.

They loved the kickstarting?

I guess that was more authentic. Was the mill producing lots of flour? When?

Oh, yes, yeah. But when we first came here, there was a problem with the mill and it was the tree which is the main pole, which is called the tree. And it had a crack in it. So they had to be replaced. So the whole tree had to be replaced. So it got replaced. And then we got it all balanced.

You remember it?

More balanced and everything else. So it was working again and then we were milling virtually every day we were open.

And was that always open to the public to see or was it private?

You know, it was always open to public to say you'd come down the the back here into a little area where there was a a just a display cabinet. That was all it was and a a little box of donations. And then you go through the door and then you'd go into the mill and they'd be able to see milling going on at the time.

I hear you made a kind of bit of a tasty recipe from the flour.

Yeah, I made what was called wholemeal scones. They were round rather than they were from an old Good Housekeeping recipe book that my grandmother gave them gave me. So they were homemade scones, they were round and you could cut them into triangles and they went down well.

And Grace has really kindly shared that delicious recipe with this, so I will be making it that we'll also be able to share it with our audience. Can I also ask, you know, at the time who was who was in, who was in charge of the mill, who was running it was it was it was it Barnsley Council, were councillors involved or was it the County Council?

No. It was the South Yorks County Council at the time. I had a bit of a run in with them who run the mill when we first got here, the kitchen was my kitchen. And I was in there one morning a couple of days after we'd arrived, and this man just walked into my kitchen, just walked straight in straight through. And I went excuse me, but who are you? And he said. I'm Jim's boss from South Yorkshire County Council and I mean I don't care who you are this is my kitchen and you didn't knock, so get out! and he looked at me and he was very large man big, and he looked at me and I went out, I said. You go up back out and you knock on the door. And he did, because he was a bit scared of me because he never had anybody stand up to him. But he then went back out, knocked on it and I said yes. Can I help you? Listen, I've come to see Jim. I went hang on, walked into Jim's office. I said there's a man at the door for you that come see you. He came and started apologising to the boss and I'm thinking I'm not. I'm not. Anyway, it wasn't long after that that he got a door put in from the storage room into Jim's. Office, so he didn't have to come to the house anymore.

Can can I ask what was the kind of focus of the mill as the site back then was it to make money to produce flour or or was it like many other heritage sites at the time? Was it all about educating mainly children?

Mainly children. Yeah, we had an education centre and we used to get a lot of school parties down to learn about milling.

Do you think what you're doing back then to sort of engage with children? Do you think that's part of the reason why the mill’s still very much love to date?

I think so, yeah because we, I mean we had Ward Green Primary School and Ward Green dinners and we had schools from all over the area. So we loved teaching them and Jim was a good teacher.

I guess this is a bit of a retrospective question. Looking back, what do you think of the mill now as you you've you've only just arrived after seeing it for so long?

I think it still looks like it was and it's still very. I can see there's lots of children around which is wonderful that there's still a lot of children coming and things like that. So that's really nice as well.

Could you tell me what was life was like in Worsbrough at the time? And perhaps then wider Barnsley? You know what? Was what was going on around you?

At the time in 1984, there was the miners strike, so we had a lot of interesting things happen. One was that one night we lost all the electricity at the mill because the some of the miners thought to cut off the electricity to the signing on point. It was up in the village somewhere and they got the wrong wire instead, which was crazy interesting to be plugged into dark, alright, like, find some candles.

And it's quite a dark spot amongst the trees isn’t it?

Yeah. We used to have some interesting things happen one night when Jim was away in Sheffield at some conference. We had two lads come down to try and bounce my car into the into the river, which was interesting, but me and the dog saw them off I had an air pistol and I went out and I said if you don't move, I'm going to shoot and and this these two lads were like, you won't shoot and they ran off and the dog chased them and bit their bums. So they ran off and then I phoned the police. The local bobby who we knew quite well. He came down and he said, are you alright? Oh yeah, fine. He said well done, he said I'm also protecting your property and the dog let him in the house and then we we got up to go Toby just started growling at him and wouldn't let him out the house, he said, oh, I see you let them in but you won't let him out? he said well, I’ll always catch anybody breaking into the mill then! So he was quite funny and it was a funny and Barnsley was a lovely place to live. The market was there still, and I know it's improved a lot now, but it was there and then it was quite a good market for everything you wanted you could get there, so that was lovely. And the shops were nice. Worsbrough itself there was quite a lot of shops up there, small shops like bakeries and things like that. So they were all very nice as well. The girls went to the Ward Green Primary School and Junior School.

So there was a community?

Very much at the community.

Going into sort of the miners strike, I can remember going coming here as a really young kid, my dad would walk me around the mill. He would be probably on strike at the time. My earliest memories. Do you think it was a place the solace for people to come?

Yeah, yeah, I do. We used to get a lot of people walking around at that time.

It's the sort of time of austerity of the miners strike. How did it impact the mill? Did your funding go down? You know, was it considered too expensive or, you know, was it a a frivolous when everyone was going through this hardship in time? What was the the attitude?

The thing was that we never charged for the mill the time it was a donation thing, only there was a little box in the wall. So we never bothered if nobody put any money. I mean, some days we get 25p in the box and then other days we get 4 or 5 pounds. So it was what it was and and some thought to paid for it so. Quite often there used to be little bags of flour that you used to go missing, or rather, we didn't get quite as much flour as we thought we were going to getout of that batch, you know and then we'd hand that on to some of the locals that we knew were struggling. That was what we did, and I'd do some baking and so you know if some of the kids were coming round and they wanted, they would tell mum.I'm hungry. So we always helped out where we could.

Yeah, supporting community and you know that's how everyone got through it.

Yeah, yeah.

Going way back into history, the the after I found out that the the mill was built in 1625 and it was the year that Charles I ascended to the throne and he that was a tumultuous time and he ended up losing his head and plunged into a kind of uncertain time sort of, you know, like of uncertainty, like the miners strike was.

Have you ever thought about the long distant past of the mill who came before you? What do you do? You know, any stories from the long distant past did you think about the people who were here before?

We didn't have much. We didn't seem to be able to find much out about people. There was a Miller, I think in the 1930s 1940s. No, I can't remember the man's name. But he was quite a a well known Miller at the at the mill at the time. And then before we came there was a another curator who was called Robshaw and Ball. He was here for a while. A lot of it was concentrating on now and the history now, getting education across to the children now for the future. Rather than thinking about the past at the time.

So it was a lot about this process of milling the nature, the kind of how that all works and and heritage in general rather than than a strict historical line back?

Also thinking of the Millers who lived here historically, do you want to make any comment on how you think people lived in the past?

Think in the past it was a lot harder here. Because it is quite when you think about it, although it's very near to Barnsley it's quite isolated, so it is a hard place to live, especially if you get cut off and I mean we got a cut off a couple of times with floods and snow It's hard when you you're stuck in this veil with nobody around and that can be quite isolating. So I think it was hard for the mill families that lived here then in the older times, because obviously they only had horse and cart and things like that. So getting down here could be quite a difficulty in especially in winter.

And as a landmark building with a clear purpose of milling for centuries. I'm thinking a bit philosophical here. Do you think that you know that it's in the local area? It's been here for hundreds of years. Does it help to give local people a sense of belonging? Identity, you know, continuity.

Yeah, definitely. I think the thing is with having something like this is that they can relate to it. Grandparents can bring their grandchildren and say I came here when I was younger. I used to play around here. So you've always got that continuity of people.

So very meaningfully in in that sense. And so you've got people saying that to you in the. 80s, yeah and you know, I know we get people saying that in the 2020s, so that's great.

So you mentioned a few, but just a general one, do you remember any local characters that staff visitors associated with the mill? I could be considered as one as I walked around with my lurcher.

We had a a gentleman who used to come down with his German shepherd called Radar and my dog Toby adored Radar. I don't know if you remember Jack Charlton footballer. He used to walk around the mill quite a lot.

Yes. Apparently, he said, that was for the view from the Worsbrough valley going down was the most beautiful view in England. I don't know. My dad told me that in the 1980s. So he might have made it up!

Yeah, but it used to quite often come around the mill and have a good walk around the reservoir. We had a lovely lady came now, as you know, South Yorkshire was very red and it was Mayday bank holiday. So we were open normally we were open on bank holidays but not Mayday Bank holiday. We got this lovely old lady came and sat on the wall outside and I've come to see the mill and we said, where have you come from? She said I got the bus from Rotherham. We can't let her go without seeing the mill working. It seems a bit unfair coming all this way, thinking it was a bank holiday and we'd be open. Come on, keep an eye on the shop. You open the mill up, get it going and we'll let her see it working. We didn't stop all day. As soon as we opened up, everybody was coming through the doors. So there was me and the girls in the shop serving and there was Jim doing the mill and one of the girls kept going out and making sure he was okay, we were really, really busy that May day bank holiday. And the next day, his boss came down and he said I've heard rumours that you were open yesterday…. We went well. Yeah, because we have this little old lady came and we didn't want to disappoint her and he said, Well, what was going on? he said. Well, Grace ran the shop, but she's not authorised to run the shop, he said. Do you know how much we made yesterday? And he looked at him and he said no, he said we made £300 yesterday, which is more than we made in the last three months. So I think it was a good idea that we opened and he muttered it must not happen again. It was a lovely day. It was a really lovely day because everybody appreciated that we were. And we and like I said, we sold so much stuff, so much enthusiasm for it because we were open on Mayday bank holiday.

Talking about the characters of the mill, there were lots of artisans, artists, engagement, people who who would come to the mill regularly to sell their wares, to teach traditional crafts.

Yeah, we had an Easter gathering. We used to have an August bank holiday one. There was a country fair that used to be held in July up on the big field

I remember it.

And then we had a potter and also an artist who come. Who was he? He he used to paint people or do characterues of people. We had a a woodworker from Sheffield called John. And then we had a Mr Slack from up the up the way who I believe he’s got some archive stuff in Barnsley now which is nice because he was lovely. He was a blacksmith and he had a portable thing. So you see. So blacksmithing, we had a lady come from dogs, who was a corn dolly lady and she used to make lovely corn dollies and things like that and let the kids try it. Well, we had a a canal craft lady who used to come who made little teapots with canal craft on and things like this. We had a painter called Jonathan who was lovely. He he was very tolerant with my daughters cause he loved his paint making and we had a a paper maker, but I can't remember the gentlemen's name, but he bought a paper making machine which she we put in the school room so that he could make paper. And that was interesting as well.

And I understand they were even making flies for fishing?

Yeah, yeah, Chris's young son Jonathan was a keen fisherman, so he used to make flies and see that that's what as well. We had lots of different crafts coming in and things and then we had the Morris dancers come in as well at Easter.

And you, you showed me some wonderful photos earlier. Really atmospheric of of the the events with the Morris dancers, but also Barnsley long sword dancers who are still going to this day.

Yeah, yeah, they came in and. And. I don't know if you know, but also we had filming at the mill

Tell me more.

I don't know if you remember the Allinson's bread ad ‘nowt taken out’ Yes, well, part of it was filmed here at the mill.

Well, I did not know that.

We had a film crew for a week. And and Roy Eastwood, who was the assistant Miller, you could see the art get getting the flower out of the bottom and beer and the girl thought it was wonderful because they had a catering van. If you look it up, you should be able to find the ad at some point. That's all we had. Yeah, we had them for a week. A week. For a tiny little advert. There, there used to be some interesting times because when I lived here. A lot of people used to think I was a wildlife expert, so if they found anything in around the reservoir that was injured or something, it would be brought to me. Which was fine because I used to do what I could but one day a lady brought me a coot and it was it just got stung. So I stuck it in the bath in the bathroom to recover. And then the girls came home from school and I went, oh, go and wash your hands. And then there. Was clutter down the stairs going Mum. Mum,there’s a coot in the bath and I went oh, yes, yes, yes don't worry about it did you wash your hands? Uh, no. Well go back and wash your hands and we'll sort the coot out. Once you've had your tea. So we had our tea and then we got the coot and took it back to the reservoir and let it go. And then somebody brought me a baby woodpecker, which unfortunately died because I had it in my bra for a while, but it died. We had two young new Millers who came from Ireland and they were lovely couple and they stayed with us for a while and learned about milling from Jim. And they found a duck that swallowed lead, and they brought it home, saying to me you can fix it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. Anyway, they were sat in front of my roaring fire with the duck on their knee. And I'm thinking they're all stuck before long. Never mind rescuing it. Anyway I sent them off to the pub with the girls and the the Red Lion across the road with the girls and Jim and when they’d gone I rung the duck's neck cause it was unfair for it. And then I walked down the far end of the res, chucked it in the res and then went back to the pub and they said is the duck alright now? And I said, it’s in the res and. The girls looked at me, the next day they took the millers on a walk around the res and they said look, there’s our duck. Yes, that’s your duck, it’s fine fine.

Well, you obviously saved it from a lingering full death

Yeah. Because. Yeah, it's not fair to let things suffer like that because it would have died a horrible death with lead poisoning. So it was. So I did go around the fisherman told them off.

The next day. I walked, walked down and I said, if any oy throw any lead in that river, you’re dead!

We need you to come out of retirement and help protect the nature.

And then we had a we had a spotted fly capture nest above in our our above our kitchen window, which the first time a spotted fly catcher had ever been seen in Yorkshire. And then I didn't realise that we would have a string of twitches coming every day watching this spotted fly catcher and then they would knock on my door, could I come in and record them from underneath your kitchen window, please? Yeah, come on. I don't need to know, but there used to be a pike in the mill pond, a massive big pike in the mill pond, and the girls were quite used to seeing it. And and there were some visitors were looking in the mill pond one day. And there was a duck with it. It's ducklings swimming around and then the end, one disappeared and the visitors looked at the girls. What's happened to the duckling? The pikes eating it. What? What? It's nature. That's what happens. When you live in nature things eat things it's feeding its young and they were quite pragmatic. Even though they were only 6 or 7, they're quite understood that things like this happened and they were quite happy with that sort of thing.

The area at the back of the reservoir, is sort of like a flooded woodland, which is actually a really sort of unusual habitat. It's quite it's quite rare, apparently. So you have kind of quite mature trees and then pools of water all around. I know now it's teeming with nature. Did you ever go around that area of the mill? Did you know it was important ecologically or?

Yeah. We often did lots of walks round the back of the mill and everywhere and round the back of the reservoir. We know there was a badger set down there at one point a big badger set. We have a lot of birds watchers because we had the greaves on the on the res. We had quite a lot of passing wildlife come through because you know it was a good resting place for them to rest before they went on somewhere else. And then one evening we had with the evening the flood. It was it was raining so hard, the water was coming, starting to come over the into the mill, into the wheel. But we couldn't open the wheel up because there was something wrong. I can't remember what was wrong. So in the middle of a massive thunderstorm there’s me and Jim opening the slus hgate, there's one of the girls at the door watching us. And then there's all going in at the house door waiting to run into the house and phone 999 if one of us fell into the mill pond.

And I've seen photos of the flood. It looks quite dramatic. So could you tell me what year this was and about its impact?

I think it was 84 a really big massive thunderstorm and there was floods everywhere. I mean, there's pictures that you've got of the gates being off half underwater. The reservoir was overflowing all the time. You just saw cascades of water coming on.

Do you think it's important that we preserve the mill?

I think it's a very important thing to preserve them though, because it's history. It's showing people what it it was like. It also shows people that you know, there is a continuity from 400 years to now this has always been a mill, so it should always be a mill. It should always be there for the people of Barnsley and all around South Yorkshire.

In that vein, can you see the mill having a long term future.

Yeah.

And perhaps a bit of a difficult question. Is there anything else you would like to add for the sort of the historical record?

My daughters and me. We often talk about the mill and it holds a special place in both of my daughters hearts. It was all the happiest times they had in their lives. They had so much freedom, so much interest, so much interesting things to find. Interesting things to look at. People to talk to and they were never afraid. They all felt safe here. It was like everybody protected them. The keepers used to keep an eye on them when they were walking around, so they knew they we could walk all around the mill and the res and nobody would bother them.

So it's a great place. To bring your family up.

Yeah, absolutely. And I always felt that they were safe. I could open the back door and they could go and I didn't worry about them. If they were out all day it didn’t matter. They were in the in the, in the outside, in the fresh air, and they were healthy.

Thank you very much and I I just think. It's a beautiful place to bring the chat to a close. So thank you Grace, for sharing your memories with us today. If you sort of brought the certainly a lot of memories back for me and and my childhood, you know, I'm sure I was going past your window as a little kid myself, so thank thank you for what you did for us here at the mill and. Keeping it going.

Thank you.

And being part of it. Alright, thank you.