Edmund Cooper

EDMUND Cooper was born in York in 1894. It was there that his great-great grandfather had settled when he left Swaledale in the 1850s. Edmund’s own father, the York historian, T. P. Cooper, brought his family each holiday to Muker, where the Coopers had lived since the 1600s. Like his father before him, Edmund brought his new bride, who came from Paris on their honeymoon, and thereafter his family for their annual holidays. He and his wife spent the last 30 years of their lives in Muker, and latterly Arkengarthdale, near their daughter, where he died aged 95 in 1989. As a pacifist and Quaker he served in the First World War as an ambulance driver in France. He was decorated with the Croix de Guerre for bravery. His working life was spent with the Friend’s Provident Insurance Company in London, but his great interest was always in archaeology and history, specifically that of Swaledale. He wrote a number of articles and books on the local history, including this one Men of Swaledale; A History of Swaledale; Quakers of Swaledale and Wensleydale; History of Reeth Friends School in Swaledale and Muker, the Story of a Yorkshire Parish.