SWEEPING changes in rural communities across Yorkshire may seem rapid now – but the pace of change today is nothing compared to the transformation one Dales village underwent 150 years ago.

For the first time we can now see, through the lives – and deaths – of just one community the scale of social upheaval brought about by industrial revolution in the decades spanning the Victorian era.

Historian Rosemary Rees and maths teacher John Ketchell have pulled together an unprecedented snapshot of the reality of 19th century life for the people who called Rathmell, near Settle, their home during a sustained period of economic transformation.

The pair had simply planned to produce a leaflet of mini-biographies linked to the oldest graves in the village churchyard. But they quickly found they had more questions than answers.

Their research soon snowballed into a major project, culminating in a beautifully illustrated new book ‘Rathmell Roots’ just published, with all profits going to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Rathmell Roots is a microcosm of hundreds of similar small communities, but with a unique spotlight unpicking the stories of the crafts, skills, loves and tragedies families tackled during the 1900s.

Through painstaking examination of Rathmell’s Holy Trinity parish records and the headstones of the church’s graveyard, plus information on the unmarked graves in the burial register, John and Rosemary have discovered a rich and colourful history, including some rollercoaster life stories.

Benjamin and Phoebe Parker, for example, married when Phoebe was pregnant in 1816 with Benjamin working as a shoemaker before they later established a grocery business in Rathmell. Phoebe was a ‘bread maker’ for the village and Benjamin was appointed as ‘Parish Constable’, a coveted role.

Shortly after the death of his wife Benjamin’s circumstances rapidly changed, and he died in the workhouse in Settle.

What happened and why remains a mystery to this day.

Others suffered at the hands of mechanisation. While agricultural roles were the principal occupation of many residents in censuses during the 19th century there were also plenty of other trades, including 14 people who were hand loom weavers in 1851 – falling to zero a decade later.

Service industries began to appear with the Girls’ Friendly Society, establishing a Laundry Training Home in the 1880s.

By the turn of the 20th century the 42-year-old Matron Helen Dickinson had girls aged 15 to 22 drawn from as far as London and Middlesbrough working for her at their bustling, and expanding, business right in the heart of the village.

With carpenters, wheelwrights, gamekeepers, coachmen and farmhands at work nearby the book suggests other effects:

“Those running the laundry would have used the village grocer and butcher, not to mention the impact eight young women would have had on the youth of the village!”

For landowners, farmers and Rathmell’s predominantly agricultural workforce, mechanisation had a different impact: their market changed from largely arable to one focused on providing food for the booming cotton towns and cities further afield.

Beef, dairy and sheep replaced the patterns that had held for centuries; tracks and trails gave way to turnpikes and new roads; connectivity and change span the decades, all set out in the stories of those whose lives changed so swiftly and dramatically.

Rathmell Roots, price £10, by Rosemary Rees and John Ketchell, with illustrations by Margaret Swift, is on sale now at Limestone Books, Settle; and from next month, from The Folly Settle.

The Museum of North Craven Life, at The Folly, reopens on February 11. On April 13, Settle writer Julia Chapman, whose Dales Detective books have just been made into a television series in France, will talk about the launch of her latest book, Date with Evil.

Julia, will be joined by local historian, Sarah Lister. Tickets available from Limestone Books.