Dorothy Una Ratcliffe

Born Dorothy Una Clough her father was George Benson Clough and her mother Rose Emily (nee Russell). George was a barrister. Dorothy was the eldest of 3 sisters Dorothy (Dolly), Winifred and Pauline. She was educated at the local high school before being sent to finishing school, at first in Germany which she disliked intensely) and then to Paris (which she enjoyed enormously). Whilst in Paris she trained as a singer under the same voice coach as Dame Nellie Melba. She must have been a good singer since she obtained a job with Carl Rosa Opera in 1911 although she never actually performed with them as she resigned shortly after having shamed her husband’s uncle into increasing his wages!

Dorothy married Charles Ratcliffe, heir to the chemical magnate Edward Allen Brotherton who later became Lord Brotherton of Wakefield. The Cloughs had met the Ratcliffes whilst on holiday on the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately the marriage soon went awry mainly due to Charles’s affairs. Dorothy left her husband to return home to her parents but in deference to their beliefs remained married to Charles and actually returned to Leeds to live with him. Unable to have children thanks to the cure for a social disease caught from her husband Dorothy became active in the local social life and supporting Uncle Edward, a widower, in his political career hen he became Lord Mayor of Leeds in 1913-14 she became, at the age of 26, the youngest ever Lady Mayoress. She helped him to equip the Leeds Old Pals regiment at the start of the First World War and subsequently became actively involved in resettling Belgian refugees. She also encouraged Uncle Edward to begin collecting a library of early books and manuscripts which again thanks to her is now in kept at Leeds University as the Brotherton Collection.
It was about this time that Dorothy began to write plays, poems and character sketches using her married name Dorothy Una Ratcliffe often abbreviated to D.U.R. and it was under that name that all future works were published even after her two later marriages. Altogether she published 49 books, many articles and edited a literary magazine [The Microcosm]. It was through her work on the Microcosm that she met such literary figures as J. R. R. Tolkien and G. K. Chesterton.
It was also at this time when, unwilling to divorce her husband due to the political problems it would cause for her beloved Uncle Edward, that Dorothy began to spend a lot of time in the Yorkshire Dales. A place that was an inspiration for much of her literary work. As she wrote in one of her poems T’ Moors:
It’s luvely fearless moors
I luve an’ onderstand
Although she claims to have learned Yorkshire dialect from her nurse as a child it was probably at this time that she became an expert in the dialect of the area. She was for a time President of the Yorkshire Dialect Society. It was probably through the society that she met Fred Lawson, himself a noted dialect poet, who illustrated many of her books.
Although her marriage was by now in name only Dorothy maintained the illusion for the sake of her uncle and, apart from a few brief dalliances she , unlike her husband, did not indulge in public affairs. As she wrote in a short poem:
Let love die bravely
Beautiful and holy
And never know the ache
Of changing slowly.
However in the late 1920s Dorothy met Noel McGrigor Phillips whilst on a cruise and thus started what was to be the greatest love of her life. In 1930 her uncle, now Lord Brotherton, sickened and died and Dorothy was finally able to divorce Charles. Dorothy and Noel married and travelled extensively. When they finally settled in Cumbria Dorothy said of her new home, called, by them Temple Sowerby Manor, that it would have been a perfect house if she could have moved it a few miles across the border into Yorkshire. She travelled extensively with Noel but always spent part of each year, in a caravan, touring the Dales, where she used to go out of her way to meet up with any Gypsies passing through, Her Gypsy poems, Brough Hill Fair and Yorkshire Gypsy, come out of her deep love of Romany culture.
I’d liefer bide wi’ my gaffer’s vans
An travel ‘ fra’ sea to sea;
Brough Hill Fair was written as a protest when the Government closed the Gypsy Horse Fair at Brough in 1941, during the Second World War and in less than a year the decision was reversed and the fair allowed to continue.
Dorothy’s marriage to Noel sadly only lasted eleven years. Noel was taken ill and died very suddenly, leaving Dorothy bereft. Croodle Beck was written shortly after Noel's death and No Longer is Thou Here was written the next summer.
A few years later she married Alfred Charles Vowles who she’d actually met whilst still ‘married’ to Charles, in the 1920s before meeting Noel. In a move very unusual for the time she persuaded Alfred change his name by deed poll to Phillips and therefore remained Mrs Phillips to the end of her life.
She continued to write poetry, sketches and plays and had just begun her first novel when she had a major stroke at the age of 80. She made a temporary recovery but she never wrote again and three months later she had a final stroke and died.
Although it is not known why all her books were taken out of publication upon her death, and are now only available secondhand.
Fortunately it is possible to still hear some of her work thanks to the fine work of Brian Bedford of the group Artisan who put music to some of her best Dales poetry and the group of issued a fantastic CD devoted to her work.
By Jim Saville with thanks to Jacey Bedord, Artisan and Roger Kendall