Peter Appleton is well known to local organisations as a speaker on heritage and local history themes and a leader of heritage-themed walks.
His first book, My Grandad was a “Felon”, an account of Skelton Association for the Prosecution of Felons, was published in October 2015.
His knowledge of the alum industry of north-east Yorkshire, acquired whilst researching and writing his second book, A Forgotten Industry, saw him invited to be a consultant and contributor to an episode of Channel 4’s Britain at Low Tide, which was transmitted in 2018, and to an episode of BBC’s Villages by the Sea, which was transmitted in 2021.
His latest, The Alum Folk, follows on from the success of A Forgotten Industry, in which the history of alum making in north-east Yorkshire was described. In amongst the unused research material from that book were stories about people and their involvement in the alum industry. These brought to life the industry in a way that A Forgotten Industry was unable to do.
Some of the longer-lived works left an extensive archive of documents, whilst the smaller, shorter-lived ones left almost no documentary evidence.
The story of each works is told using this varying quantity and quality of surviving documents.
Throughout the book, the emphasis is always on the people: their actions, their emotions, their relationships, their mishaps, in so far as the documentary evidence permits.
This allows us to explore questions such as:
How did Christopher Prissick amass his fortune?
Why did John Hall Stevenson give £1000 to the son of one of his employees?
What hold did Kenneth MacLean have over his younger brother Alexander?
Was it just good fortune that nobody was killed when the landslide destroyed the village and alum works at Kettleness?
What really caused the long-running legal dispute over the Great Intack?
Was there really an alum works at Grosmont?
Books will be available to buy and Peter will be on hand to sign them, as well as deliver a talk on the book and its subjects.