In the 1930s Ernest Butcher (a professional singer, from Lancashire as it happens) wrote an elaborated version of it, including the "posh" verse (a little more straightforward than Les's recollection). Julian Pilling published a piece about the song in English Dance and Song, vol. 60, no. 1, 1998, p.18.

Roy Palmer learned the song (to the tune of Ach du liebe Augustin) while living near Barnsley, 1961-3. It appears in his A Touch on the Times, London: Penguin Education, 1974, 160-1. According to Peter Kennedy, it appeared in Bookworm's Paradise (Hiking & Rambling Manual) in 1911, but I don't know anything about that.