In 2023, Michael Hardy (Digital Engagement Curator) was researching the history of Barnsley town hall which opened in December 1933. In the same pages of The Barnsley Chronicle a song written by a Barnsley bottle maker caught his eye.

In this follow up article twelve months since the song was re-discovered we are excited to share more work by Arthur Godfrey and the exciting plans for the song in 2024 including a projection as part of Barnsley Bright Nights and a new short film created as part of the Fusion ‘Festival of Joy’

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As the Ancestry advert says “all you need is a name” in our case all you need is a name in a newspaper with a song sheet….

It was late November 2023 when we found Arthur Godfrey’s Christmas Eve carol, within days of finding it we recorded a version, added some wonderfully festive nostalgic images from Barnsley Archives thinking that a few people might watch and be filled with festive cheer. We never expected the video to go viral, that the first recorded version by Dr Tegwen Roberts on the town hall staircase would be played on radio stations in Yorkshire and across the world. Even while stood watching Barnsley Youth Choir performing in Barnsley Town Hall on Christmas Eve didn’t feel quite real!

As #TeamBarnsley signed off from work for the year just after Tegwen appeared on BBC News with Matthew Amroliwala we were hoping that someone listening to Broadcasting House on BBC Radio4 that morning might be a relation of Arthur Godfrey. In the limited research time we had ahead of Christmas we had pieced together the Godfrey family tree and knew that Arthur lived in Barnsley for the majority of his life. Census records showed he was born in Taylor Row, then Oakwell Terrace for a short time before moving to Waltham Street. These records also show that he worked in the glass industry from the age of 12. His last known address was in Athersley in the 1950s Further newspaper research suggests that the move to a new housing estate was part of a house clearance programme in the centre of town.

We’ve not found any photos of Waltham Street in our collections, above is an example of a street that was cleared in the 1930s and the second is Athersley under construction in the 1950s

Arthur Godfrey…..Face Reveal!

We had one last Christmas wish! Two of Arthur’s grandchildren were listening to the radio that morning and got in touch with us, separately to say “It was such a lovely surprise to hear a carol composed by my grandfather. He was a gifted man who was a self taught violinist and also wrote poetry and stories.”

They knew he had written a carol but had never seen or heard it before now. This confirmed our suspicions that he was a bottle maker by day and prolific writer by night. With family history it is always a good idea to start with finding an obituary before working backwards.

“His logic and wit were devasting. With truth he could have been called the local Socrates” were the words of his friend Henry Irving, another regular Barnsley Chronicle contributor.

Both of Arthur’s grandchildren spoke of another article from the same paper called “Christmas Eve Grotesque” written under the pseudonym of J.O.D. Cassel. The family had searched for the article some time ago but in the days before The Barnsley Chronicle was digitised this required knowing an exact date or you had to be prepared to spend hours scrolling on Microfilm! As our search to find more of Arthur’s work continued we finally found the article written in dialect, make that very broad dialect! It was actually printed just after Christmas in January 1932

If you click on the image you can zoom into the article. We are working on making a full transcript but wanted to publish this blog in time for Christmas 2024, rather than some time next year….If anyone wants to give it a go in reading and recording it, please send audio to experiencebarnsley@barnsley.gov.uk

A Writer From A Young Age

We also searched the British Newspaper Archive for any other clues about Arthur and we found that he had been sending correspondence from a relatively young age to newspapers across South Yorkshire. We can’t say for certain when his first article was published but we have found an article in the Weekly Telegraph, a Sheffield newspaper in December 1889

Arthur had been a bottle maker since the age of 12 so it’s not surprising that he was a man of science. What is also interesting about this page from the newspaper is that an A.Godfrey appears in a list titled “Members of the K.H.B” To begin with we didn’t know what K.H.B stood for, until we looked at the top left of the page:

“The Children’s Corner Conducted by Captain Trim, Rules of The Kind Hearted Brigade.”

It’s not something we have come across before but a quick Google search later tells us that it was a regular feature in the Weekly Telegraph in a section aimed at the fifteen and under, the brigade even had it’s own medal

What Influenced Arthur Godfrey?

We can only suggest what influenced Arthur’s writing but it would seem that he found writing a cathartic exercise. A quick search on Ancestry and some more detective work in newspapers shows that the Godfrey’s had quite a lot of heartache to contend with. Arthur and his wife Elizabeth lost a number of children, including Arthur who was only seven months old on December 26 1901. Then in the 1920s they lost two more children in the space of a year, in 1926 a daughter called May who was four years old and then in 1927 another Arthur Godfrey was killed at Carlton Colliery at the age of only 16. Christmas was clearly a bittersweet time for the family but Arthur’s poetry suggest that he had a fondness for the season, being born on the 18^th December probably helped with that

“Christmas Star” December 1943

Although Arthur wasn’t in the military he did live through two World Wars which is another reason why his poems that were published in the Barnsley Chronicle were quite reflective. The paper printed a few of his poems during WW2

We’re still finding more of his work, and the fact he had so many pen names means that there is still more for us to discover, but Arthur seemingly had a poem for each season, including Bonfire Night. This poem (click to read) printed in November 1957 is the last trace of Arthur Godfrey we have found in The Barnsley Chronicle before he was taken ill and went to Bradford to live with family. We have added all the articles and poems to a Flickr album

Arthur The Award Winning Writer

One of the poems we have yet to discover is “A Magic Bath at Rockla” Arthur was amongst the winners in a competition by the Yorkshire Dialect Society in 1923.

Although we’ve built up quite a picture of Arthur Godfrey it feels like the more we uncover the more there is to discover! We are hoping that someone reading this may have even more of his work. We know that Arthur was well connected to St Peter’s Church and as as well as playing the violin his grandson remembers that he had an organ in his living room. Other mentions we found in newspapers were his links to the Barnsley Sunday School and in 1902 as part of the huge Whitsuntide procession through town “Arthur Godfrey’s tuneful setting of I think when I read was evidently a favourite”

A New Christmas Tradition?

It was Arthur’s wish in 1933 that “the song was played through Barnsley and district this Christmastide and it will be appreciated to be the work of a Barnsley composer.” We hope that we have done Arthur and his family proud and is continued to be sung in Barnsley and across the country. We already know that quite a few choirs have been learning the song. It will also be performed by Black Dyke Band & Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus at Sheffield City Hall in December.

If you’re in a choir and are planning on singing The Barnsley Carol this year we would love to hear from you as we’re creating a playlist of different versions to add to our website where you can also download the lyrics to the carol. Please contact michealhardy2@barnsley.gov.uk

We’re going to end this blog with how it all begun with the version of the song by Dr Tegwen Roberts in December 2023

Merry Christmas from us all at Barnsley Museums! We hope you also enjoy our online Advent Calendar