We were saddened to hear about the recent death of an old friend from our Pendle days, Stuart Greenfield.
Stuart was a popular character around his native Colne and he gained a certain amount of fame locally when he became involved with the ancient game of knur and spell, which enjoyed a revival in the towns around the East Lancashire / West Yorkshire border areas in the late 1950s.
Huge crowds used to flock out into the countryside to watch the matches and large sums used to change hands in sidebetting (allegedly…!).
By the early 1970s, the game had attracted sponsorship and TV coverage and Stuart managed to become World Champion (at least as far as the knur and spell "world" actually extended…) on two occasions.
He was retired when we knew him and spent most of his time walking and supporting the local cricket and football teams. One day, he got out his box of photos and memorabilia from his knur and spell days and started showing us - and Paul being Paul, he thought it would be a great subject to do a small book about.
Stuart wasn’t particularly academic so we wrote down all his memories and funny stories, typed them up and put it all into book form - and he kept popping round with extra notes of things that he’d thought of.
It was great fun to write and it was very good for Stuart as well as it pushed him to get in touch with a lot of old friends that he had lost touch with over the years.
Stuart was very proud of the book that we created together – and it remains to this day the only book in the world about the history and development of knur and spell.
I’m sure that, if he is looking down now, he would not want me to miss this opportunity to mention that copies are still available via Amazon and all other good outlets..!
Check it out HERE
