Our Great Yorkshire Life

Barnsley farmers Rob and Dave Nicholson head to Halifax to find out more about their mum's side of the family. They start at Dean Clough Mill where their mum Cynthia started work as a 15 year old before heading to the Shibden estate – a place grandma Olive took them for days out as kids. It's their first trip back in 40 years. They also look inside the home of celebrated diarist Anne Lister, aka Gentleman Jack, and visit the kitchen their great grandmother Eliza worked in as a cook in the 1900s.

In South Yorkshire, an ambitious restoration project is nearing completion on the unique monument Keppel's Column. The 35-metre-high folly, commissioned in 1773, has been inaccessible to the public for decades but as Rotherham council's Lisa Haworth is about to find out, that's all about to change.

At the Humber lifeboat station on Spurn Point in East Yorkshire, it's a big day for Sean ‘Chez' Cheston. He's training to be a coxswain and his seafaring skills are about to be tested to the max as he leads a ‘man overboard' exercise under the watchful eye of station coxswain Joe Pieniak. If Chez passes today's test, he could be leading a real rescue in a few weeks' time.

And in Horsforth, six miles from Leeds, things are buzzing for local chef Matt Healy. His newly opened restaurant is going from strength to strength, and he's now looking to extend his menu and add new desserts that are grounded in Yorkshire heritage. Matt heads to a rhubarb farm in Rothwell which is in the centre of Yorkshire's famous rhubarb triangle where fifth generation farmer, Lindsay Hulme, shows Matt the dark art of forced rhubarb production before Matt serves up rhubarb treats to Lindsay back at the restaurant.