Lodge Percival (1860-1948) was one of the younger sons of James and Mary Ann
Percival of Gunnerside Mill. Mary Ann’s father, James Peacock, had been the
miller at Gunnerside for several decades before his death in the 1860s. Mary
Ann herself was widowed in 1870 when James Percival died of typhoid fever.
Local directories from the 1870s to the 1890s describe Mary Ann Percival as
a grocer, miller and farmer. Doubtless her children, including Lodge in due
course, helped her to keep these family enterprises going.
In 1884 Lodge Percival married Elizabeth Maragaret Heseltine, the daughter of
a Gunnerside flour dealer, grocer and carrier, and they had nine children, of
whom one died in infancy. The eight who lived to grow up were:-
Mary Ann (1885-1951)
William Heseltine (1886-1945) m. Lizzie Rutter, 1916
Margaret (1888-1948)
Dorothy Jane (1891-1972) m. Albert Newman, 1921
James (1893-1951) m. Elsie Bearpark, 1923
Eleanor Grace (1896-1952) m. Ambrose Harker Thompson, 1930
Elizabeth (1898-1983)
John Lodge (1902-1971) m. Lena Tipping, 1952
The 1901 Census describes Lodge Percival as a grocer and farmer: it is clear
that he took on the running of the family farm and shop, and although the mill
was by this time no longer working as such the Percivals still owned the mill
premises they had inherited from James Peacock, and were able to put the buildings
to good use.
Lodge Percival’s wife died in 1915, and his mother died the following year at the
age of 84 just a few weeks before his eldest son, William Heseltine Percival,
married Lizzie Rutter of Shoregill Head. William and Lizzie kept a small greengrocery
at the Croft, just across the road from the larger grocery stores which the
Percivals already had at the bottom of High Green. These two establishments were
known, conveniently enough, as the Little Shop and the Big Shop respectively.
1916 was also the year in which Lodge’s second son, James Percival, joined the
Yorkshire Regiment to fight in the Great War. He was to see three years’ military
service abroad. The third and youngest son, John Lodge Percival, was at school in
Richmond, but is said to have left and come home in order to help with the family
business.
By 1920 the Percivals of Gunnerside were very well established as local farmers,
hay and livestock dealers, carters, carriers and grocers. All three of Lodge
Percival’s sons were active in the business. The idea of augmenting their existing
horse-drawn Richmond run with a motor-vehicle is said to have been William’s, and
a Ford was duly acquired in or around May 1921. Family tradition has it that this
vehicle could carry 14 passengers or a ton of meal. If so, it may well have been
what was then known as a “convertible” model like that purchased by
John Robert Stubbs of Arkengarthdale around the same time.
A second motor-bus, this time a substantial Selden with a roofed charabanc body
seating 20 passengers, was acquired in the Summer of 1922. Given that Percival’s
buses later became practically a part of Swaledale, it’s interesting to note that
the Percivals were by no means the first nor the most significant motor-proprietors
in the area when they started. In May 1921 the Scratcherds of the Black Bull had
a fleet of three motor-buses on the road. The Percivals did not buy their third
bus – a brand-new Ford 14-seater – until August 1924, and it may be that this was
actually a replacement for their earlier Ford rather than an additional vehicle.
In the 1920s, motor-vehicles were merely a novel sideline for the already
well-established business of Lodge Percival and Sons.
This sideline presently took on an identity of its own, as William and James and
John Lodge Percival began trading in the name of Percival Brothers. Many transport
enthusiasts – and many former passengers – will recall the firm of
Percival Brothers (Coaches), Ltd, established in June
1937 with its Registered Office in Richmond. But it is worth noting that this widely
remembered bus company had its beginnings in a time and place where horsepower
was still provided mainly by horses.
The Percivals who ran the firm never forgot its Swaledale roots, indeed it was
arguably to the detriment of the business that John Lodge Percival could not or
would not do so: for, by the 1960s, running buses up and down Swaledale all day
every day was no way to make money. But we anticipate...
In the first half of the Twentieth Century, the firm of Lodge Percival and Sons
served customers practically from cradle to grave. Provisions, tobacco and groceries
could be bought at the Big Shop in Gunnerside, where it was also possible to order
coal, hay and farm supplies. Parcels and goods could be brought up from other
retailers and tradesmen in Richmond, or collected from Richmond railway station,
as could larger consignments from bedsteads to building materials. Rabbits and eggs
were routinely taken down to Richmond – initially by Lodge Percival’s wagonette,
and later by his sons’ motor-buses – to be sold at the market or consigned to the
L. N. E. R. at the station.
Gunnerside tradesmen relied on Percival’s to convey their tools and materials to
jobs outside the village, and indeed to lead sand from the bed of the River Swale
for use in construction. Starting around 1930, the Percivals also generated
electricity for lighting houses in Gunnerside, using a Lister 5hp engine housed at
the mill; the same engine was also used for grinding animal meal, and was
notoriously past its best by the time the National Grid reached Gunnerside at the
beginning of the 1950s. And when at last you got beyond such earthly delights as
these, the local undertaker might well send your coffin by Percival’s cart or even,
on occasion, in the back of a Percival’s bus.
Most farming families paid their bills at the Big Shop in cash, but some would also
credit home-made cheeses and even calves and pigs against their grocery accounts.
The Percivals themselves kept pigs, at the mill; thus from Lodge Percival and Sons
it was possible, in the days when many families habitually kept a pig, to purchase
a piglet, order the meal on which to rear it and then, at the appropriate time, buy
the salt and saltpetre with which to cure the meat.
If you’re partial to a nice bacon sandwich, just consider this: in the 1930s the
Percivals could have sold you some of their own home-reared bacon, or else a pig
and the meal with which to fatten it, and possibly even brought you a dietary
supplement for it from Osmond’s of Grimsby, which would have been sent by rail
to Richmond and collected from there by the next Percival’s bus; they could have
sold you salt and saltpetre at pig-killing time, and if you had found yourself
short of meat-hooks in your pantry you could have ordered a couple from Spence &
Co. in Richmond to be sent up on the next bus; then the Percivals could also have
sold you the flour and yeast with which to make your bread and the coal to heat
your oven for baking, or else they could have delivered you a loaf from the baker’s
at Reeth; and the Percivals could have sold you some butter or, if you made your
own, they could have sold you butter-colouring and butter-paper with which to make
and wrap it. Had you then found yourself surfeited with bacon sandwiches, Dr Speirs
at Reeth could have made up a prescription for you and sent it on the next
Percival’s bus, and had you wanted some light entertainment to ease your suffering,
Lodge Percival and Sons could have charged the accumulator for your wireless set at
the mill.
Lodge Percival formally retired from business in February 1938 although he was still
often to be seen behind the counter of the Big Shop for some time after that. By
this stage, the Percivals had at least half a dozen motor-buses on the road, as well
as a hire car and one or two motor-lorries; they had established a bus garage at
Barnard Castle in 1934 and taken over Albert Morton’s bus depot
in Richmond around 1936; and they were shortly to buy the Reeth Motor Service bus
operation from Tim Scratcherd with whom the Swaledale
service had been run jointly since the end of the 1920s. For those who may be interested, we have compiled
a Fleet List.
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Lodge Percival outisde the Big Shop in 1934 with granddaughter Betty Newman
(now Betty Taylor) - note advertising for Capstan cigarettes, Wills’s cigarettes,
Bovril, Chivers’ jellies, Zebo, Oxo, Kensitas cigarettes, Reeth Show. Photograph: Betty Pike.
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