Family Video Archive… Annice - Voice of the Dales
In the mid 1980s, Yorkshire Television made a documentary about a lady called Annice Sidwells, a talented operatic singer with a beautiful and special contralto voice. Annice lived in Settle, North Yorkshire, but the documentary was based around the unlikely story of how a singer from a small-town amateur operatic society made it big in the early days of wireless radio, travelling down to London to perform live on national radio. The romantic angle was added to the story when her boyfriend of the time came to take her home, away from the smog, back to Settle, and marry her.
The man was Matt Haygarth, my grandfather, who died at the age of 50 and I never met. Annice, my grandmother was a wonderful and special lady with an unrivalled joy for life, and I feel very lucky to have this film about her life!
