Hannah Hauxwell

Hannah Bayles Tallentire Hauxwell (1 August 192630 January 2018) was an English farmer who was the subject of several television documentaries. She first came to public attention after being covered in an ITV documentary, Too Long a Winter, made by Yorkshire Television and produced by Barry Cockcroft, which chronicled the almost unendurable conditions of farmers in the High Pennines in winter.

Yorkshire Post article

A Yorkshire Post article published in April 1970 chronicled the daily life of Hauxwell, then 44, as she worked alone in her family home, Low Birk Hatt Farm, a dilapidated farm in Baldersdale, west of Cotherstone, in the North Riding of Yorkshire (transferred for administrative purposes in 1974 to County Durham). She had run the farm by herself since the age of 35 following the deaths of her parents and uncle. With no electricity or running water and struggling to survive on £240–280 a year at the time, the average annual salary in the UK was £1,339 . Life was a constant battle against poverty and hardship, especially in the harsh Pennine winters, when she had to work outside tending her few cattle in ragged clothes in temperatures well below freezing.

Television documentaries Too Long a Winter In the summer of 1972, Hauxwell was discovered by a friend of a researcher at Yorkshire Television while out walking in the Yorkshire Dales. The researcher contacted Barry Cockcroft, a producer at the company, who proposed to make a TV documentary tentatively entitled The Hard Life. The documentary started with her leading a cow into a shed during a blizzard in Baldersdale. After the documentary was first shown in 1972, Yorkshire TV's phone line was jammed for three days with viewers wanting to find out more and help her. ITV received hundreds of phone calls and mail containing gifts and money for "the old lady in the Yorkshire Dales". less than from Low Birk Hatt Farm, where the meadows, designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, are now called Hannah's Meadows and managed by Durham Wildlife Trust. To mark her 85th year, she was interviewed by the Yorkshire Post and revealed that she was still living a frugal life and remained an avid radio listener.

In 2016, Hauxwell moved into a care home in Barnard Castle, and the following year into a nursing home in West Auckland. She died there on 30 January 2018, aged 91. After a funeral service at Barnard Castle Methodist Church, Hauxwell was laid to rest at Romaldkirk cemetery, not far from Low Birk Hatt.