It was in April 1917 that Frances Griffiths, then aged 9 years, and her parents returned to England from South Africa where her father had been serving in the British Army.

Whilst father, Sergeant Arthur Griffiths of the Royal Garrison Artillery, was despatched, in December 1917, for further service in France, Frances and her mother, Annie, lived with Annie’s sister Polly, her husband Arthur Wright and their daughter, Elsie, at 31 Main Street, Cottingley.

Elsie was a few years older than Frances, at 16 years old, but they spent lots of leisure time together. This included playing around the beck which ran behind the Wright’s home.

It was at Cottingley Beck that, in the summer of 1917, Frances and Elsie first saw the fairies. Unfortunately, when the parents disbelieved the pair of them, they needed some proof to convince them. Arthur Wright was a keen amateur photographer and so the girls, unbeknown to Arthur, borrowed his Midge camera and proceeded to take photographs of the fairies. Arthur subsequently developed the film and the parents became convinced.

The photographs remained undisturbed, private and uncontroversial until 1920. By then Arthur Griffiths had ended his army service and the family was resident in Scarborough.

At a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Bradford, Elsie’s mother Polly brought up the subject of the fairy photographs and this led to the interest of Edward Gardner and the famous author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among others. Sir Arthur published an article in the Christmas 1920 issue of Strand magazine concerning the Cottingley fairies.

Sir Arthur and many others, including experts from photographic laboratories, were convinced that the photographs were genuine and the word spread that fairies were existing in Cottingley Beck. The news spread to national and international newspapers and the legend of the “Cottingley Fairies” was born and Elsie and Frances became unsolicited celebrities.

Edward Gardner supplied the girls with cameras and plates and asked them to provide more photographs. A few more were supplied, the last of which the girls swore was genuine.

The girls, of course, had manufactured the photographs using cardboard cut-outs and hat pins but they had taken the adventure too far to get out and committed themselves to keeping the secret for the rest of their lives.

And so the secret remained until the 1980s when Frances admitted that all but the last photograph had been fakes.

Two cameras (Arthur Wright’s Midge and Elsie’s Cameo provided by Edward Gardner) used to take some of the photographs are held by the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Many publications have been produced and many newspaper articles have been published about the “Cottingley Fairies”. Frances Griffiths own version of the affair, written by her daughter Christine Lynch – “Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies – Frances Griffiths – In Her Own Words” was published in 2009.

Cottingley Village History Society hold copies of all the photographs and many of the letters which passed between the various parties together with copies of newspaper and magazine articles and books written on the subject. These are held at Cottingley Heritage Centre.