Based on the book by Benjamin Myers, Shane Meadows fictionalises the remarkable true story of the rise of David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners in new drama The Gallows Pole.
Ben Myers, author of The Gallows Pole explains when and how he came across the true story behind his book and how seeing it adapted by Shane Meadows has brought the story full circle.
Watch The Gallows Pole on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from Wednesday 31st May at 9pm
I moved to the area in 2009 and lived in Mytholmroyd and I heard a bit about this local mythology but there wasn’t that much information about it, and I didn’t look too deeply into it. One day my wife, Adele, who’s also a writer, was visiting a place called The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle in Durham, she walked into the library and was looking along the shelves and there was one book that didn’t have a spine on it. She pulled it out, put it on the table and it fell open at the trial notes of the Cragg Vale coiners, so she was reading them from 1770 and she came home that day and said ‘You know the coiners story?’ and I said ‘yes I know a bit about it’ and she said ‘that would make a brilliant TV series, you should write it’ and I said ‘well I don’t know how to write telly, but I could have a go and write a novel and maybe Shane Meadows could film it one day with some of the actors from This Is England.’ That was in 2014, and it wasn’t even a plan, it was sort of a joking pipe dream really.
Anyway, that’s what I did. I spent most of that year 2014 and 2015 researching it and writing, I’d already walked a lot of the moors and woodlands around here and during my research I discovered that James Broadbent worked in a cottage called ‘The Stub’ as a weaver and that was the house I’d just moved out of. I thought this is too good to be true, I know the locations, and Bell House - some friends of mine are architects and they’d worked on the refurb of that house - I was basically in the middle of what felt like a film set. I’d walked all the old routes and all the old tracks, and I thought well ok I’ve done the research in terms of I know the area, now I have to find out the historical facts, which was a more laborious process. So I read through lots of dry and dusty accounts of the Cragg Vale coiners in this highfalutin legal language from the 18th Century and I wrote the book.
But there were a few things that fed in to it as I was writing it, for example one of my neighbours in Mytholmroyd, her nickname’s Pauline Dragon, was telling me that she grew up on the edge of the moor above Cragg Vale and she said ‘You know there’s funny things going on up there, when I was a kid, one night I woke up and there were these stag-headed men in my bedroom and they were dancing round my bed and I could see this steam pluming off them, it happened twice, and I swear I wasn’t asleep, it was real, and I told my parents and they were like ‘shut up, don’t tell anyone that, they’ll think you’re nuts.’ So there were a few things told to me during the writing of the book like that, and I thought well I’ve got to include that detail and perhaps it could be David Hartley who sees the stag-headed men.
Once that fell into place, I thought only a certain type of person would probably admit to that, so I decided to make him this visionary guy, prone to delusions and hallucinations and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the book. I didn’t want to write an historic account because they already exist, I wanted to write something that was a bit psychedelic and over the top and kind of reflected the intensity of this landscape, because at any time of year, but particularly in autumn and winter when you walk around these moors by yourself, you can feel a sense of history that’s there in the soil and it’s a magical feeling but it’s a bit malevolent as well. So I wanted to take a true story and crank it up in to something that’s pushing the boundaries of what historical fiction is really.
The book was sent out to 10 publishers and they all turned it down, so I published it through a small publisher called Blue Moose Books based in Hebden Bridge, who I’d already done two books with, and they understand the area, they understand the story, and we built the whole thing up from the ground. Myself and Kevin Duffy who runs that publisher, we launched it in, what is now (on screen in the series), Barb’s pub in Heptonstall, which is otherwise known as Heptonstall Museum, in the Spring of 2017 when the book came out, and built it up as a word of mouth thing. We printed 2000 copies and it got some good reviews in national press and then booksellers started getting in touch, it had a very eye-catching cover designed by a friend of mine and it just gradually built and built and built and then it was optioned for film and then in Autumn 2019, I got a call from Element Pictures saying ‘a director’s read it and he wants to make it and we’ve got a name for you’. This was on the phone and I was in a remote cottage in Scotland writing another book, and I said ‘who’s the name?’ and they said ‘It’s Shane Meadows’ and I put my hand over the phone and went ‘F***ing hell!’ to my wife, and then said back in to the phone ‘Oh great, that’s interesting’, so it had come full circle.
Shane Meadows, writer and director, on his vision for the TV Drama of The Gallows Pole:
I really wanted to delve into the history of this story and the circumstances that lead to an entire West Yorkshire community risking their lives to put food in their children’s bellies.
It was during the workshopping process with the actors I realised there was also a story to tell leading up to Ben’s incredible book. A prequel that not only allowed us to understand ‘why’ the Cragg Vale Coiners did what they did, but maybe fall in love with them a smidge while they did it. It may have turned into one of the biggest crimes in British history, but it was pulled off by a bunch of destitute farmers and weavers doing what they had to to survive, and I think people will resonate with that.
You can tell a story in any century if you care about the characters, but there was something so attractive about this period in British history. Large mouthfuls of West Yorkshire were about to be inhaled by the Industrial Revolution and our country and its unspoilt sides set to change forever. So it was an honour to be able to go back and hold up a magnifying glass to some of dudes that were living through it.
Marry that with a cast that pitches some of the UK’s finest actors alongside an awesome array of brand spanking new Yorkshire talent and you have a series unlike anything else I’ve made before.
Watch The Gallows Pole on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer
BBC News Article - on the first-time actors amongst the cast
