THESE rather sedate young revellers were photographed at a festive party in Keighley’s Municipal Hall in the 1930s.
Of special interest is the elderly lady on the extreme left of the back row – Mrs Craven Laycock of the Manor House at Utley, who had taken several Utley children to the event by taxi.
The wife, and from 1924 the widow, of a tanner and currier, Mrs Craven Laycock was a prominent local benefactress. Among the causes she supported were infant welfare, the Mayor’s Clog Fund, the Keighley Nursing Association, the Cinderella Club children’s camp at Humphrey Head, the Braithwaite open-air school, the Mission to the Deaf and Dumb and the Keighley Girls’ Club.
The grounds of her home were opened to the public so frequently that they were nicknamed Utley Park!
In 1931 she endowed a Craven Laycock prize for spoken English at the Keighley Boys’ Grammar School, “in memory of her husband and his appreciation of seemly speech”. She died in 1947.
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