My grave reservations are buried by these caring men (From Craven Herald)

My grave reservations are buried by these caring men

6:32pm Saturday 19th July 2008 in Dales Folk By John Sheard

People often ask me where I find the subjects for this column. The answer is that many are characters I meet on my travels around the Dales, others are suggested to me by a group of contacts - my "scouts" - whose judgement I trust.

Today's suggestion came from my very latest scout who is showing some promise at the job at the tender age of not-yet-quite-three: my grandson Samuel. Like many little boys, he has an obsession with machines and, in particular, tractors and diggers.

And it was his encounter with a digger and its cheerful and helpful operator that led me to the Family Blades, Sextons to the Dales, or - if we want to put it more bluntly - Craven's busiest grave diggers.

My wife was taking young Sam for a walk near St Stephen's Church in Skipton when, delight of delights, his eagle eye fell upon a small digger making a largish hole. What the hole actually represented was, of course, unknown to the lad but the sight of such a machine at work had him gibbering with excitement.

This attracted the attention of the operator, Richard Blades, who very kindly stopped his work, switched off the machine (and all its working parts, I must assure any 'elf n' safety officer who might read this) put Sam in the driver's seat and let him play diggers for a few exhilarating minutes.

When he came home, the boy was almost incoherent with joy as he tried to explain this momentous thrill - and so I came to make contact with the unique and not-at-all mournful Family Blades, owners and operators of Blades Builders and Sexton Contractors, Barnoldswick.

When I set out to meet founder John Blades at Waltonwrays Cemetery and Crematorium, I was unsure of what to expect.

In all my years, I had never before interviewed a grave digger - they are a pretty singular breed, after all - and wondered if he would be something like those Victorian woodcuts of Burke and Hare, the infamous Edinburgh grave robbers.

In fact, I met an ebullient, cheerful chap who is proud of the work he does - "a well-made grave is a great solace to the family mourners" - and, as well as running a successful family business, also throws in for free a sort of counselling service for long-lost relatives who have often travelled for many miles, even crossed oceans, to visit the graveside of former family members.

John, 55, carries with him a rather posh leather brief case which one would expect to see in the hand of a top lawyer or a London banker. It is full of grave plans for most of the 40-odd graveyards and cemeteries that the Blades family care for throughout the Dales - plus letters of thanks of grateful relatives.

"It is quite common for a priest or a vicar to refer to me relatives who are visiting the area - one family all the way from America - who want to visit a certain grave. I am able to tell them where it is and their gratitude is quite touching. I have dozens of letters of thanks in here," he said, opening the case and offering me a handful to peruse.

He says all these things with a smile but not a laugh. He has a gentle sense of humour without the slightest hint of the macabre, which must be a key asset in the job: "We try to do our work with respect and compassion."

He backs this up by saying he will not, under any circumstances, pose for photographs in a grave - "I don't want anyone to look at the paper and say, What's he doing in Auntie Mable's grave?'"

John Blades started life at the bottom. Born in Wakefield, he was farmed out as a three-year-old to the former children's home, Burnside House, a stone's throw from where we sat and talked. At 15, after school at Aireville, he was forced to leave the home - where, surprisingly, he admits he enjoyed his childhood - and found himself alone in strange digs.

He went into the building trade and then met wife- to-be- Stacey Goddard, a Carleton lass. They married young, started their family of three lads, and bought a house in Barlick - they couldn't afford one in Skipton.

By one of those strokes of fate, there was a monumental mason's business nearby and John, short of cash, found himself doing holiday relief shifts ... digging graves at three local churches.

"That was hard work, donkey work," he told me. "I was young and fit then but it still took six hours to dig a grave - a full, hard day's work. But we had a young family and not much brass so I decided that the only way forwards was up. Fortunately, it seems to have worked out quite well ... and we have a proper digger now."

Onwards and upwards may seem a somewhat contrary motto for a man in his profession but he loves the job - "Some of the graveyards we service up the Dales are in some of the most beautiful scenery in the world," he says - and, of course, it is a job that needs to be done.

John has also trained as a crematorium assistant at Waltonwrays, which is much more difficult than it sounds: the environmental controls on cremations get stricter every year. So, as John says with a wry smile: "You'll come to me one day, one away or another."

This is one of the oddest sentences I have ever written but there is something reassuring about that. It's good to know that you will be seen out of this world, up or down, by a man with a gentle smile, pride in the job, and a genuine sense of compassion.