The Croom Mabel Trod

Distance: 3.5 miles (circular)
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Queen of the Pram Pushers, Mabel walked the lanes from almost childhood, born in Little Driffield, orphaned and with wit and a wily sense of survival, made her own way in life joining the raggedy yet noble band of men and women who roamed the green lanes around her home. She was a familiar sight at the Wolds farms and villages collecting discarded clothes from the farmers’ wives, and piling them precariously high as she made her way to the rag merchant in Driffield.  A pretty, dark eyed girl who found love with one or two Rangers over the years, whose babies would join the perilously piled clothes on the pram until they could walk beside her and her constant canine companion, her little dog.  

Not all the donated clothes made it to the rag merchant, indeed, Mabel’s powers of persuasion when procuring these items was legendary and it was not uncommon to see her proudly parading the lanes adorned in her latest acquisition.  On one occasion a local landowner’s wife at Elmswell came across Mabel outside her neat little tent, preparing her evening meal on a pot over the camp fire, splendid in a gold lame evening dress, she quipped ’ah I see you have dressed for dinner Mabel!’

She was famed for her exclusive makeshift tent that she called home, always cosy with a campfire outside to keep her warm and a paraffin stove, and she always made ready for her bed and wore an array of beautiful nighties, obviously ‘donated’ by the local ladies of the Wolds.  Many a farmers wife kept a chair by the fire in the kitchen for Mabel and even in her later years whilst residing in Wold Haven in Pocklington, the Matron would retell stories that as the weather warmed up so Mabel would take her leave and make her way up Warter Hill back to the Wolds for the summer…  

Mabel was the very last surviving Wold Ranger, who died in March 1990 at the grand old age of 90, her headstone, in Pocklington Cemetery, a simple but beautiful affair, reads 'Mary Murray 1.1.1900-8.3.1990 Last of the Wold Rangers'.

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Croom Mabel