'I was looking for an apartment!' When Dolly Parton almost moved to Yorkshire

As the music world mourns the loss of Dolly Parton, stories of the country music superstar’s philanthropy and legacy have been shared by fans from the UK, US and beyond.

The singer was a true worldwide household name - which made her visit to South Yorkshire in 2007 all the more remarkable.

Parton jetted over to England to help promote her Imagination Library initiative, which provided books for the under-5s across America. Keen to bring the programme to the UK, she chose Rotherham as the unlikely first British destination for its international expansion.

The superstar said she ‘totally related to Rotherham’, and even claimed tongue-in-cheek that she was considering buying a property in the town.

Recalling her visit four years later in a BBC interview with journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, Parton was asked if the idea of her visiting Rotherham might have ‘messed with people’s heads’.

She said: “It should’ve have because we thought it was perfect - it’s out in an area where there’s lots of hard-working people, poor people - I totally related to Rotherham and I’m so glad we started there. It’s more of a heart-spot for me because I related to the people.

“It’s an industrial area and when they were making fun of me for going out there I thought - “Don’t make fun of me”, I was even looking for a little apartment!

“I thought it would a great place for me to go and hide out sometime. You may be walking down the streets of Rotherham and see me coming out of a little cubby hole.”

Her visit to the county came about when then Rotherham council lead Roger Stone got in contact. When she visited (having not initially heard of the town), she appeared with Stone before crowds at Rotherham’s Magna Centre.

Parton compared Rotherham to her own poverty-stricken upbringing in the US, before later telling the assembled crowd: “"Now I've discovered that Rotherham is just a Roger Stone's throw from Tennessee!”

The singer’s launch of the Imagination Library in England helped connect thousands of infants in Yorkshire to reading. The initiative saw babies presented with a book when they’re born, and it’s estimated that by 2012, more than 13,000 children in Rotherham were receiving a new book every month as part of the scheme.

After Parton’s sad passing this week, locals in Rotherham took to social media to recall how her visit to South Yorkshire connected their children to reading.

One poster on Facebook, Gary Tiley, commented: “My daughter used to get sent her books, we had some happy times reading them, a beautiful lady that will be sadly missed by a huge amount of people.”

Another commenter, Susan Hunt, added: “Both my boys had books through the Imagination Library. I just thought what a lovely thing to do by such a lovely lady.”