WHAT started out as a labour of love to help a dale widow cope with the grief of losing her husband has turned into an epic account of his life.
When Carol Hamilton decided to tell the story of her late husband Bert’s life she thought it might run to perhaps a dozen pages.
However, the more she researched the more there was to write about, eventually running to more than 50,000 words.
It charts Bert’s story from childhood, when he and his brother Arthur were abandoned and brought up in a children’s home until they were old enough to work, to happier times when Bert met his future wife and fell in love at first sight.
Bert and Carol met in 1991, under unusual circumstances, and were married a year later.
Carol said she met her future husband purely by chance when she and her mum travelled up to the area from their native Birmingham for a holiday.
“We stayed on The Stang and had decided to go out for a meal,” she said. They pulled up in Dalton trying to find their way to a pub in nearby Gayles, but not knowing the way.
“There was one house in Dalton with a light on, so I went and knocked on the door to be greeted by a man with a mop of curly hair,” recalled Carol.
“I asked if we were on the right road to Gayles and he invited me into his cottage. It was like it was destiny.”
Bert later met Carol and her mum at the bar.
“He told me he had fallen in love with me because of the woolly hat I had on,” said Carol, who had no hesitation in moving north to be with Bert.
Bert was 57 and Carol 48 when they tied the knot, moving into a house next door to the village hall.
They had 30 happy years together, enjoying a shared love of the animals they kept in a couple of fields on the outskirts on the village.
Bert was also a regular at tractor rallies held around the dale.
When he died, aged 87, in 2022, Carol, now 82, said she felt she had lost everything.
“It broke my heart. I adored him. We had good times,”
Carol said sitting down to write the life story of Bert was a therapeutic exercise.
“It did me good because I was back with him.
“I thought it was going to be about a dozen pages but it’s ended up at 50,000-plus words.”
Carol’s book, The Life Story of Barclay (Bert) Harvey and his brother Arthur Edward is available in digital format.
Anyone interested can contact Carol on 07811 520290.
