The Yorkshire Coiners: The True Story of the Cragg Vale Gang

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Dodgy Yorkshire accents are at a minimum. The Gallows Pole's first-time actors were selected for their accents. I really liked Bell House because behind it there’s a vista where we would all chill, and just being there was peaceful and beautiful. The Cragg Coiners were the subject of a children's novel Gold Pieces by Phyllis Bentley. The story is seen through the eyes of a fictitious 12-year-old boy who lives nearby and who befriends the son of David Hartley. All the places and the main characters such as David Hartley and William Dighton are given their real names. Gold Pieces was reprinted in 2007. David Hartley was buried here in 1770 after being executed by hanging at York Tyburn for the part he played in leading the Cragg Vale Coiners, though the only charges he actually faced were for clipping a Guinea with another man.

A breakthrough came in the following month, when James Broadbent from Mytholmroyd, who was active on the fringes of the Coiners gang, approached Dighton. Dighton allegedly offered Broadbent 100 guineas to betray ‘King David’ Hartley and his close associate, James Jagger.One of the counterfeit coiners, James Broadbent, betrayed the group and gave evidence that revealed the conspirators in exchange for leniency of his own crimes. Dighton then arrested Hartley, which enraged his brother, Isaac. He rallied a gang of men who conspired to kill Broadbent (and in probably one of the earliest forms of crowdsourcing, raised 100 guineas from people who supported the plan) and on 10 November, 1969, two farm workers, Matthew Normanton and Robert Thomas, fatally shot Broadbent. The punishment A serious, intense person (in The Gallows Pole, his novelisation of the gang’s story, Benjamin Myers writes of a “seldom-seen smile”), Hartley was a brutal man, not unaccustomed to using fists and force to bend others to his will. It’s inaccurate to paint him as an altruistic, charming Robin Hood figure; that he forged a network of allies and associates was probably less to do with charisma and more with intimidation. It seems that there are two sides to the coin when remembering David Hartley: revered or reviled. But there's also something intrinsically human in why his story continues to be told, according to Billingsley.

By late 1769 a list of nearly 80 counterfeiters had been drawn up; 30 from Cragg Vale, 20 from Sowerby, 15 from Halifax, 7 from Wadsworth and 6 from Warley and Midgley. By Christmas over 20 Coiners had been arrested, imprisoned and were awaiting trial. Isaac Hartley, David Hartley's brother, lived at Elphaborough Hall, Mytholmroyd. Recruited Matthew Normanton and Robert Thomas to kill William Dighton Bley Griffiths, Eleanor (19 May 2021). "BBC announces new Shane Meadows drama The Gallows Pole, based on "the biggest fraud in British history" ". Radio Times. Archived from the original on 19 May 2021. But Hartley was smart. Taking advantage of his formidable local reputation, as long as everyone around him was benefitting financially, his enterprise was relatively secure. As Myers writes, “the valley folk mythologised this gang leader whose behaviour they saw no harm in, so long as there was food on their tables and logs in their log stores”.

Stevie Binns

The first reports of coining in the area were made in August 1767. A John Greenwood from Halifax had been arrested in Hamburg for coining and in his statement claimed to have learnt the practise from James Johnson, a Smith from Wadsworth.