10 August 1976: The fire roared skywards and after three centuries, the tree was enduring its final experience
The sweet chestnut tree stood alone at the centre of the field, the one visual break in the sweep of cut corn. Its gnarled trunk, more than 25ft round, recalled the droughts and storms of more than 300 years. It was the last survivor of the parkland landscape that covered the area before the days of high farming, the last leviathan on the clay plain of Halland. Around it the barley stubble smouldered.
Sparks fanned by the south wind blew into grooves in the trunk igniting the dry bark. They grew quickly into flames licking into the hollow interior which drew them upwards like a chimney. Twigs broke and fell, fuelling the flames. The fire roared skywards even penetrating the hollow side branches until the burning tree looked as if it were holding flaming torches, pathetic as a November Guy.
Ripe wheat crop on fire in Essex countryside on a hot and windy summer’s day. Photograph: Justin Kase /Alamy
By now the flames had reached the green crown of the old tree and a constant cascade of bark and twigs fell into the furnace, and the heat burning holes right through the trunk. After three centuries, the tree was enduring its final experience, part of the now ritual celebration of harvest home. “Good riddance,” said the farmer, satisfied that there would be one less encumbrance to his agricultural improvements. The autumn ploughing would have a free run, a few square yards added to his crops. The landscape had lost another memory.
When Det Con Tom Ryan came across a diary entry about an old cattle trailer in July 2025, he knew he had finally solved the murder of a man who had disappeared six years earlier.
Richard Dyson vanished without trace in November 2019. He was last seen alive on 17 November that year and was reported missing eight days later when he failed to meet his daughter, Bethany.
"He was by all accounts a very good father, and he was regularly in contact with his daughter Bethany who was, I believe, 19 at the time of his disappearance. It was totally out of character," Ryan recalled.
"It was clear that he had disappeared off the face of the Earth."
Richard, who was 55 at the time, had been living in his car at Parkside Cottage on Christopher Wright's farm on Sheffield Road in Barnsley, helping with small jobs around the farm.
The farm was searched, but other than a collection of illegal weapons belonging to Wright, nothing more unusual was found and there was no sign of Richard.
His phone, however, showed it had never left the farm.
Police believed from the outset that Richard had been killed and that Wright and his childhood friend, Karl Schwalbe, were responsible, according to Ryan.
"We very much suspected their involvement, but without a body it's very difficult to prove murder," he said.
On 28 July, Wright, 73, and Schwalbe, 72, were convicted for their roles in Richard's disappearance and murder, ending a six-year wait for answers for Richard's family.
Richard Dyson (left) vanished without a trace in 2019 and Christopher Wright (right) was found guilty of his murder in July this year
But how did police finally catch them?
Nearly six years had passed when Ryan reviewed phone records relevant to the case.
Among several calls made by Wright, one to Ian Ollerenshaw on 20 November 2019 caught his attention.
"I went round to Ian's house and I asked him, 'Can you by any way remember that phone call that you received over six years ago' - and, to be entirely honest, I expected him to say no," he said.
But the farmer, who lives at Alderthwaite Farm, just over a mile from Parkside Cottage, did remember.
More remarkably, he produced a leather diary from 2019, in which he had noted that Wright had stopped by to drop off an old trailer.
"As soon as I spoke to Ian and he remembered the phone call and he said 'the trailer is still here, do you want to go and see it' - as soon as he said that, I knew I'd found Richard," said Det Con Ryan.
The farmer told him the trailer had been sitting padlocked and undisturbed in the corner of a field for years.
By the time Det Con Ryan came across it, it was partially obscured by overgrown hedges and long grass.
Image source,Crown Prosecution Service
Image caption,
Richard Dyson's body was found inside an old cattle trailer on a farm in Barnsley
Most of the trailer was empty, but about a third of it was crammed from floor to ceiling with junk.
And there, tucked away in a corner and covered by a baby changing mat, was a blue barrel.
"The barrel was full of concrete, but it quite clearly had human bones protruding out of the top of it," said Det Con Ryan.
A post-mortem examination later confirmed the bones belonged to Richard and that he had been shot with a shotgun before his body was dismembered, placed inside the barrel and encased in concrete.
A jury would later hear how Wright had worked as a butcher for several years in the 1970s.
Alongside Richard's remains, police found something else that would help them bring the person responsible for his murder to justice - an ID card in the name of Christopher Wright.
Wright and Schwalbe were both arrested the same day.
Image source,Crown Prosecution Service
Image caption,
Christopher Wright's ID was found by police inside the trailer
Between 2019 and 2023, police had spent more than 286 hours searching Parkside Cottage.
But what they found during their searches in 2025 dwarfed their earlier discoveries.
Instead of a handful of firearms they had discovered previously, officers found an arsenal of weapons, including dozens of guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, swords, 30 to 40 axes, daggers, crossbows and even tripwires.
"It's obviously a man who has a fascination with weaponry," Det Con Ryan said.
"It is the most weapons that I've ever known to be found in a person's house.
"He had as many weapons and guns as you would need to arm an army."
CCTV footage of Richard's last movements on 17 November 2019 further supported what officers already knew - Wright had been the last person to see him alive.
The cameras captured Richard returning to Wright's farm shortly after 23:00 GMT.
About 20 minutes later, Wright called his friend, Schwalbe. The first call went unanswered, but minutes later a second call, lasting only a few seconds, connected.
Not long after, footage showed Schwalbe's car making its way towards Wright's farm.
"The extent of the physical assistance that Schwalbe provided to Wright is unknown to everybody other than the two men," said Ryan.
"What is known is that Schwalbe could on any day in the last seven years have helped stop the suffering of Richard's family, but he chose not to."
Three days after Richard's disappearance, bank transactions showed Wright went to Allendale Building Supplies in Hoyland.
While it was never proved, it was suggested he went there to buy cement.
Image source,South Yorkshire Police
Image caption,
The fateful entry from Ian Ollerenshaw's diary
Long before Wright's and Schwalbe's trial began, prosecutors expected Wright to argue that someone else must have been responsible for Richard's disappearance and murder.
But senior crown prosecutor Jamie Barton said the investigation consistently pointed in one direction.
"All lines led to Mr Wright and Mr Schwalbe," she said.
However, she said the six-year gap between Richard's disappearance and the discovery of his body left investigators with limited forensic evidence, poorer-quality CCTV than would be expected today and little mobile phone data.
Even the murder weapon remained elusive, with none of the weapons seized presenting a link to Richard's fatal injuries.
Although prosecutors did not have to prove motive, Barton said detectives uncovered evidence supporting long-standing rumours that Richard had stolen from Wright and, therefore, Wright killed him.
"It's a case theory, it's not something that we can be certain of - but it's one thing that is relevant," she said.
During the trial, jurors were played a covert recording of a conversation between the two men outside Barnsley Police Station.
On the recording, Wright can be heard apologising to his friend for getting him into trouble and Schwalbe saying he wished he had never gone to the farm that night.
In another recording, Wright can be heard praying.
"He was saying things along the lines of 'I only did what I had to survive, they bit the hand that fed them, I hope the police don't find my weapons'," said Ryan.
Christopher Wright (left) asked his childhood friend Karl Schwalbe (right) to help him hide the body of Richard Dyson
After six years of unanswered questions, it was not the covert recordings, the diary entry, the animal trailer or the weapons that mattered most to detectives.
"I think more than anything, it's the fact that Richard's daughter knew that her dad had gone," said Ryan.
"She knew he must have died because he'd not been in touch for all this time, but you hold on to that 5% of hope because you don't quite want to believe it.
"To give her some closure has been wonderful and I hope they get the justice they so richly deserve."
25 May 1951: An old forge has been turned into a workshop where beaten copper trays and other metal wares may be seen or bought
YORKSHIRE NR: We are fortunate in this delightful village in having several craftsmen, each one of exceptional merit in his own medium of metal, stone, or wood. An old village forge has been turned into a workshop where beaten copper trays and other metal wares may be seen or bought, while beside the beck a heavy oak seat has recently been placed as a memorial to two one-time members of the village population. Our war memorial tablet is the work of the village mason, who has lately decorated his own small garden with a miniature stone cottage roofed with clay pantiles and fronted by a low garden wall. A delightful addition this would make to a miniature rock and water garden tucked away in a corner in our nearest seaside town.
Blacksmith, Bill Tompkins, York, England. Photograph: Bill Tompkins/Getty Images
Pied flycatchers, which continue to multiply along the stream sides in the forest where boxes are provided, seem unable to establish themselves in or near the village. Last year a pair built in the hole used before by the nuthatch pair, but nothing came of their efforts. This year a male has been singing hard at a box on the weeping willow in my own garden but has not yet been able to attract a mate. Another cock in a beech wood has secured a suitable hole in an elm but he too is without a wife. This bird carries a coloured ring which shows that he was hatched last year in a box farther up the dale.
