'A very happy life, to share this lovely work'

But Marie Hartley, to whom the compliment was addressed, would have none of it.

"We do all the research together and then write the chapters we want to," she insisted. "We read each other's work and in the end we don't know who's done what."

The perfect combination. But it is ended with the death, at 88, of Joan, one half of a partnership as synonymous with the Yorkshire dales as Marks & Spencer is with Britain's high streets. And while M&S might have lost its gloss, the lustre of "Hartley and Ingilby" will shine ever more brightly down the years. For the 14 books they produced together form a matchless contribution to the appreciation and understanding of their beloved Yorkshire dales - and indeed the wider Yorkshire.

The much wider Yorkshire, one should say. For while their volumes on the rural life and customs of the North York moors and West Yorkshire - follow-up companions to their outstanding Life and Tradition in the Yorkshire Dales - are well known, it is often overlooked that they by no means confined themselves to rural Yorkshire.

Published in 1959, their Wonders of Yorkshire contains precious accounts of their visits to a West Yorkshire woollen mill, the Ledston Luck colliery, near Wakefield, and the then new wonder of the North, ICI Wilton - all now as much history, or nearly so, as ling thatching or hay-making with a horse-drawn "sweep".

So too are the pre-container-era Hull docks, also visited by the intrepid pair. Their faces became blackened by a steam trawler - perhaps fortunately since they had been warned not to be mistaken for more familiar unattached females on the docks.

Fate seemed determined that Joan Ingilby, younger twin of the heir to Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, should join Morley-born Marie in an equal writing partnership. When the two met, while serving at a wartime ambulance station at Wetherby, Marie, a trained artist, had already published an acclaimed series of books on the Dales with Ella Pontefract.

Joan visited them at their cottage at Askrigg. Having taught herself to type, she joked: "I'll come up and be your secretary."

Two years after Ella's death in 1945, Joan filled her place, as co-author and friend, sharing the Askrigg home, in a seamless transition that could be considered miraculous. Their first book, The Old Handknitters of the Dales (1951), established Joan's gifts not only as a writer and supportive interviewer but assiduous notetaker and masterly organiser of the (very vital) files.

In two meetings with the pair, I found Joan to be the less talkative, though no less welcoming, but always speaking to good effect. Of their work she said: "If anyone imagines it is purely a matter of absorbing the local atmosphere and writing one's impressions, they are very much mistaken."

Very true - for their purpose was to produce a meticulous record, in words and pictures, including accurate drawings by Marie, of the crafts and customs of vanishing ways of life. The collection and sifting of the vast amount of detail - memories and artefacts - was an enormous labour. But this never shows in their books, which, written with warmth and affection, transform the raw material of history into a record that captures the feel as well as the facts - the spirit, you might say - of their subjects.

A piece on oatcake making, in Life and Tradition in the Yorkshire Dales concludes: "Oatcake keeps you warm, is sustaining and good for the teeth. Whenever it is mentioned people's eyes light up as they remember from their childhood the delicious smell on a baking day, the well-filled flake and the delectable taste of their favourite variety."

Who wrote those evocative words - Marie Hartley or Joan Ingilby? Both, of course.

In her own right, Joan was a poet.

You are never too old and frail

To set your standard in the sky.

So run a couple of lines of her verse, which, since she continued writing into her 80s, could sum up her life. But they were written when she was a young woman.

As her partnership with Marie blossomed, and their work required full-time attention, Joan gave up writing poetry. Curiously, Marie also made an unconscious sacrifice - more or less abandoning the woodcuts that had adorned her books with Ella Pontefract. As if pre-ordained, the scales always balanced equally with Hartley and Ingilby.

In the local community, Marie, responding to local requests, took a leading part in forming the Askrigg art club. Joan, a keen gardener, was a catalyst in reviving the local produce association. Even their writing arrangements - sitting facing each other at desks at the opposite ends of their long, book-lined study - had a kind of symmetry. And together the women donated their priceless collection of dales artefacts to found the Dales countryside museum at Hawes.

"It has been a very happy life, to share this lovely work and see it appreciated," Joan once observed. Read at her funeral service, one of her poems, When We Break Free, begins:

When we break free,

We shall go singing

Down the ages

Out where the great winds blow.

Though the "we" was a collective "we", more than 60 years after these lines were written they, and others that follow, stand as an apt expression of the Hartley-Ingilby partnership and friendship and its legacy to the future.

Who will say that Fate, once more, hadn't taken a hand