THIS atmospheric view is a reminder of winters when Redcar Tarn was described as “a skating Mecca” or “a local winter resort”.
A Keighley Skating Club, founded in 1865, had transformed a mud-bath for cattle into a seven-acre sheet of water which attracted visitors from far and wide.
“If a poll were to be taken,” commented the Yorkshire Observer in 1912, “amongst skaters in the busy towns of the West Riding on the subject of the most popular rendezvous at which it is possible to follow the invigorating pastime, Keighley Tarn – or, to give it its proper title, Redcar Tarn – would head the list by a large majority.”
In 1929, for example, with ice inches thick, skating was possible during most of January, even after dark by the light of motor-car headlamps. A special bus service plied between town and tarn, carrying, on the last Sunday of the month, an incredible thousand passengers. When the ice deteriorated early in March, the fire brigade was called on to flood it and help produce a better surface.
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