Obituaries Ian Dewhirst I
an Dewhirst, 82, a retired reference librarian and local historian of his home town of Keighley, died at home on 20 January.
He received an MBE in 1999 in honour of his services to local history, and was also awarded a doctorate from the University of Bradford. In 2009, he unveiled a locomo- tive named in his honour (a Northern Rail 158 diesel unit, with his name emblazoned on the side).
During Ian’s national service, he found himself, as sergeant-instructor in the Royal Army Educational Corps on the Surrey-Hamp- shire border, in charge of the army library.
Photo © Keighley News
On leaving the Army in 1960, he started working at Keighley Public Library.
From 1965 to 1967 he was Lending Librarian, then in 1967, became Reference Librarian, remaining in that post until his retirement in 1991. As Reference Librarian, with over- sight of a large and growing Local History collection, he
told many tales of saving archives and documentation from the local council offices and local firms. He was devoted to preserving anything of value.
Ian was responsible for the unique archive at Keighley library. He was most happy when researching in the archives he created, and said: “I can spend months searching for a particular fact, but during my search I come across much else, and when I find my fact it is within a context. To press a button and instantly obtain the fact may be much quicker, but that fact may be lacking a context.”
Ian was born on 17 October 1936, and educated at Keighley Boys’ Grammar School and the University of Manchester, where he graduated in Honours English in 1958, later gaining his ALA. His father was a newsagent, his mother was a full-time housewife and mother of two. As a local historian he averaged around 80 talks a year; and contributed a weekly feature to the local newspaper. He has written hundreds of articles, several books and also made occasional television appearances. Ian was a keen walker and was a well-known and loved figure in the town.
Donna Irving Keighley
Winifred Parkinson W
inifred Parkinson died in March 2018. I first met her when I went to work with her at Mottingham Library as her Senior Assistant in 1963. We got on well from the beginning and I worked with her for four years before I left to have my first son.
The library was in a convert- ed shop in the High Street and had a friendly and welcoming atmosphere.
“Parky” as she liked to be known, was fond of animals and she used to let the dogs come in and we even had one black Labrador who used to stand on his hind legs and put his paw on the counter to say hello.
In those days we used to do the book ordering, classifica- tion and cataloguing (later centralised) so there was plenty of variety of work and we had the satisfaction of doing everything ourselves.
54 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Miss Parkinson was creative and she liked doing book displays. I remember making cobwebs by stretching Uhu glue across the book cases. She was very well liked by the customers as she would go out of her way to help them. While I was working with her, she passed the Final
Library Examinations. In 1968, a new library was built at Mottingham and Miss Parkinson became the Librarian with more staff. I had left by then and she used to say it did not have the same friendly atmosphere, being a more formal building.
She wrote the history of Mottingham which was later expanded into a well-received book in a series on the area published by Bromley Council. She was a member of Short- lands Poetry Society and an elected member of the SWWJ – the Society of Women Writers and Journalists. She had several poems published.
We remained friends over all the years and at 95, she still had an incredible memory.
Rosemary Fordyce Former colleague at Mottingham Library
April-May 2019
Obits
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