New book covering the rich history of Batley RLFC is now complete after huge collaborative effort

A new book covering the history of Batley Rugby League Football Club has been created as part a project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Detailed publication: Author John Roe with From The Mountain Top: An Archive History of Batley RLFC.Detailed publication: Author John Roe with From The Mountain Top: An Archive History of Batley RLFC.
Detailed publication: Author John Roe with From The Mountain Top: An Archive History of Batley RLFC.

The publication, entitled ‘From The Mountain Top: An Archive History of Batley RLFC’, was written by John Roe, author of 2014’s ‘Sermons from the Mount’.

The book is a truly collaborative effort with Mr Roe building on the enormous research effort by Terry Swift who spent hundreds of hours researching the British Newspaper Archive in order to gather and compile an archive of more than 1,200 articles related to the club.

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These articles, drawn from more than 50 different titles, now form a cental artefact of the Batley RLFC Heritage Project.

Mr Swift’s work was also supplemented by Ken Pearson, who unearthed a range of articles from the archives of The Batley Reporter and Guardian and The Batley News, housed in Batley Library.

Mr Roe said: “Having read through, cross referenced and analysed all the sources, taking into account issues of reliability and accuracy, I drew up an outline plan for the whole book with regard to chapter headings, thematic strands, key events and contextual historical references. Subsequently, for each of the ten chapters, I compiled a detailed plan which laid out the structure of the chapter, including precise reference to which sources were being used and for what purpose.

“Each plan was sent to Terry, Ken and Craig Lingard (the project co-ordinator) for their approval. The whole enterprise was a truly collaborative effort, involving detailed discussions about the relevance of various articles unearthed by the researchers.”

The book, priced £13.99, is available now directly from Scratching Shed Publishing or via Amazon.

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