Mrs Valentine Rowley (1924 - 2021)

We are saddened to hear the news of Mrs Rowley’s death. Mrs Rowley was the widow of Dr Geoffrey Rowley, the eminent Skipton historian. On his death, Mrs Rowley donated his personal research archive to Skipton Library. This included his notebooks, which detail the history of each building on Skipton’s famous High Street, Swadford Street and Newmarket Street, many articles on aspects of Skipton including the inns, street names and yards along with over 600 historic photographs Dr Rowley collected with his fellow local historian Ken Ellwood, that are the main feature of this website.

Without Mrs Rowley this website would simply not exist. She gave us her blessing to digitise the photographs and the notebooks and allow us to share them on the Internet so they could be easily accessible to everyone. One of the last times we saw her was when she was guest of honour at the relaunch of this website May 2018. Mrs Rowley was not much of an Internet user, but she was very impressed by the website, and amazed and delighted that people from all over the world could now access her husband’s fascinating archive.

Of course, the collection was just one small aspect in Mrs Rowley’s long and fascinating life. She was a stalwart member of Skipton’s community, as this nice obituary in the Craven Herald testifies: https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/19038715.volunteer-stalwart-dies-aged-96/

We send our condolences to her family and friends.