THE YORKSHIRE DALES
The Rivers of Yorkshire present to the writer of these pages much the
same embarrassment of riches and problems of compression on an only
lesser scale than those presented by the general title of this work. One
thing, however, reduces the rather bewildering amplitude of the subject
as expressed upon the map by not a little, and that is the natural
reluctance in a work like this to linger by rivers after they have lost
their purity from the refuse of mines and factories, and most certainly
after they have actually entered the industrial districts. Another thing
which tends to further simplification is that the country generally
known as the "Yorkshire dales," comprising the Upper and most beautiful
portion of the best of the rivers, is the district that is associated in
the minds of most people with the typical river scenery of this great
county. And this region may be roughly described as covering the
north-west quarter of Yorkshire, and including the Upper and cleaner
portions of nearly all its important rivers. From hence come the Tees,
the Swale, the Ure, the Nidd, the Wharfe, and the Ribble, with their
many tributaries. It is a curious fact, too, that with the exception of
the first and last, every one of them takes a south-east course, and
every one eventually pours its waters into the Ouse near the Humber
estuary. The Tees, whose northern bank is Durham territory for nearly
the whole of its course, flows into the North Sea, having its own ample
and busy estuary at Middlesborough. Through the centre of Yorkshire,
running north and south, is the great plain, or by comparison a plain
with which the traveller on the Great Northern railroad to Scotland is
so familiar, and whence thousands of persons no doubt derive their
impressions of this distinguished county. But at intervals any such
traveller with an eye to the country may see rising far away in the east
as on the west, those lofty hills and moors that in the minds of as many
others represent the Yorkshire which their memory turns to. I have
spoken of the north-western highlands, usually known as the Yorkshire
[Illustration: THE TRENT, NOTTINGHAM]
[Illustration]
dales, with their rivers pouring away to the south-east. But before
dealing with them in greater detail, in accordance with the plan of this
chapter and the drift of Mr. Sutton Palmer's skilful brush, I should
like to remind the reader that the greater part of East Yorkshire, from
north to south--from the Tees, that is, to the Humber--also consists of
either moors or chalk wolds. The former, practically filling the
north-east quarter of the county (I leave the three Ridings alone as
they have no physical significance), also gives birth to many streams.
But the Esk alone breaks its way eastward into the North Sea, having its
mouth at Whitby. With the exception of a few trifling brooks all the
other rivers of these north-eastern moors, as well as the few small
streams of the south-eastern wolds, flow south or south-west to find
their way eventually into the Ouse or its estuary the Humber. It is
quite curious how, south of the Esk watershed, practically every brook
turns its back on the neighbouring North Sea. The infant springs of the
Derwent, which eventually carries all the waters of these northern moors
between Thirsk and Scarborough to the Ouse, are situated within 3 or 4
miles of the east coast.
But to return to the dales, which more immediately concern us here, the
Ribble is the only river among them all that breaks away to the west.
Entering Lancashire near Clitheroe, it flows through that county by way
of Preston to Morecambe Bay. It rises in the same block of moors--a
southern extension of that Pennine range known in outline at least so
well to tourists in the Lake Country--as the rest of this group of
Yorkshire rivers, and is quite a good-sized stream when it arrives at
the picturesque little town of Settle, the first place above the size of
a hamlet upon its banks. The limestone crag of Castleberg rises finely
to a height of 300 feet above the town, while at thrice that elevation
in the near neighbourhood is one of those caves whose discovery in
various parts of England excited so much interest early in the last
century. This one, like the rest, has been prolific of mammalian fossils
and Celtic remains. Giggleswick, with its embarrassing name and
well-known grammar school, almost adjoins Settle. Flowing with strong
and rapid current through a vale of verdant pasture land, bounded upon
either side by rolling grouse moors, the Ribble finds fresh beauties
among the woods of Gisburn, the seat of Lord Ribblesdale, and in the yet
more striking gorges beneath Bolton Hall,
[Illustration: THE WHARFE, BOLTON ABBEY, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
the ancient seat of the Pudsays, whose effigies in the parish church
tell a long tale of predominance in this Craven country. The Hall is the
oldest house in the district, and intimately associated with the
wanderings of Henry VI. after his defeat at the battle of Hexham, for
the Pudsay of that day gave the hapless king a safe asylum for some
weeks. The panelled room he occupied is still preserved, and a spring in
the grounds still bears his name. Yet more to the point, a glove, a
boot, and a spoon, relics of his sojourn with them, remained in the
family till they lost Bolton in the middle of the last century, and are
still preserved. A beautifully wooded cliff rising high above the broad
rapids of the Ribble near the house has great local notoriety under the
name of _Pudsay's Leap_. For tradition tells how the owner of Bolton, in
the reign of Elizabeth, had acquired great favour at Court, but having
discovered silver on the estate proceeded to set up a mint of his own,
thereby bringing down upon his head the rough arm of the law. Escaping
on horseback from the sheriff and his party, this greatly daring Pudsay
is said to have baffled pursuit by leaping his horse down this wooded
precipice above the Ribble, and, thence riding to London at incredible
speed, thrown himself at the feet of the Queen, with whom he had been a
favourite. Confessing his crime, he extracted a pardon from a monarch
notoriously exacting where the precious metals were concerned. An old
local ballad celebrates the daring Pudsay's feat:
Out of the gates himself he flung,
Ranistire scaur before him lay;
Now for a leap or I shall be hung,
Now for a leap quo' bold Pudsay.
As the river sweeps on past Clitheroe, which is just in Lancashire, the
long ridge ending in the uplifted gable end of Pendle Hill, celebrated
of old for its witches, rises finely on the east, and the moors of the
forest of Bowland, or Bolland, are equally conspicuous on the west. The
large tributary of the Hodder, after a beautiful and devious course
through the last-named moors, swells the Ribble considerably below
Clitheroe, whose ruined castle keep, lifted high above the town, strikes
an appropriate note in the centre of a noble scene. The Calder coming
down from Burnley and more tainted sources joins the Ribble on the
opposite bank, and henceforward the latter loses in great measure the
charm of unpolluted waters and a pastoral atmosphere among the gathering
signs of industrial life that mark its course to Preston.
There are many places of interest in the corner where the Ribble,
swelling in volume and altering somewhat in character, leaves Yorkshire
for the County Palatine. The farmhouse of Waddington, where Henry VI.
after spending several months was eventually captured, is still
standing. The ruined abbeys, too, of Shawley and Whalley are both near
Clitheroe. So also is the great Roman Catholic College of Stonyhurst.
And one uses the epithet advisedly, as on the nucleus of a fine Tudor
country-house and a large estate, acquired a century ago, additions have
been made to the buildings by the thrifty Jesuit managers at a cost of
something like £300,000, a figure that might set even the wealthiest of
our public schools agog with envy. Indeed, the banks of the Ribble are
as closely associated with the ancient faith both to-day and yesterday
as any district in England. One is not likely to forget what hopes were
placed by both the first and second Pretender on the gentry of this then
remote part of England, nor what befell them at the ancient town of
Preston, now so expanded and so busy, on the Ribble's banks.
Of the five rivers--for I have omitted mention of the Aire since it is
absorbed so early into the industrial districts of Leeds and
Bradford--which flow down the north-western dales towards the central
plain of Yorkshire and the Humber, the Wharfe is as notable as any. It
is also, next to the Aire, the first to cross the route of any one going
northward and across the grain of the country. It is surprising how soon
all signs of the vast and murky industries of Leeds are shaken off. For
where 8 or 9 miles to the north of it the N.E. railroad crosses the
Wharfe and stays near it for a time, the prospect is one of a broad and
strenuous river sweeping through a noble vale. Spacious and undefiled
woods and homesteads and country houses adorn the slopes, and great
Yorkshire fields of meadow or pasture spread back from the banks
apparently unconscious of the very existence of the prodigious stir and
uproar which beneath vast canopies of murk and smoke is going forward
less than a dozen miles away.
Far away the most celebrated spot upon the Wharfe, and one of the most
visited of the kind perhaps in all England, is Bolton Abbey. To those
who have never seen it the very fact, perhaps, of its propinquity to the
industrial districts, and the familiarity of its name, might suggest a
scene if not actually overrated at any rate so overrun as to impair its
charms. The first is certainly not the case; and as regards the second,
though thousands
[Illustration: THE WHARFE, THE STRID, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
in all come here every summer, there are probably more summer days than
not in which, owing to the space covered by the grounds and their
variety, you could enjoy them in your own company to practically any
extent you chose. Bolton Abbey as a place of pilgrimage consists of the
ruins themselves and the deep valley for two or three miles up, down
which the Wharfe pursues its rapid rocky course beneath hanging woods of
great beauty. Art, to be sure, has to some extent stepped in and cared
for the luxuriant timber as it would be cared for in a park or private
grounds, which indeed these actually are, though the Duke of
Devonshire's residence here is only a glorified shooting-box and used as
such. Paths have been cut high up through the woods for the better
displaying of the river as it surges far below with all the restless
humours of a northern trout stream, while above the woods the high
moors, purple in August with abundant heather, raise their rounded
crests. At the Upper extremity of the demesne 2-1/2 miles from the Abbey
ruins which stands on the banks of the river at the lower entrance to
it, the latter contracts into that singular gut or flume known as the
Stridd. Every one upon familiar terms with rivers of this type knows
many such spots where the waters are forced through a narrow channel
between walls of rock. That the Wharfe just here has to submit to these
conditions in a pronounced degree is fortunate, since it exhibits to
countless souls whose ways do not lead them by the secluded banks of
mountain rivers, a very fine instance of a not uncommon but always
beautiful characteristic of their nature. The artist here renders
superfluous any verbal description of this beautiful and boisterous
portion of the Wharfe, and the same remark applies to the glorious reach
above in which Barden Tower will be seen perched among its woods high
above the fretting stream amid the grand sweep of the surrounding moors.
Barden Tower is a building of no ordinary personal interest. Originally
one of the peel-towers erected in the Middle Ages for the keepers of
Barden forest under the Cliffords of the North, it became at the close
of the Wars of the Roses the residence of that Henry Lord Clifford whose
romantic story every one who knows their Lake Country or their
Wordsworth is familiar with. Son of the fierce and formidable Black
Clifford, whose life and property the Yorkists deprived him of on the
first opportunity, he was sent for safety as a child to a shepherd in
the Keswick country, in whose family, and in all respects as one of
them, he grew to man's estate. When with the advent of Henry VII. the
Clifford estates, including Skipton and Barden, were restored, their
owner was nearly thirty, with the life and uprearing of a peasant as the
sole equipment for his new and high position. But heredity counted for
much in this case, though curiously enough it took the form of peaceful
rather than warlike enterprises. Social instincts, too, seemed to have
been effectually stamped out upon the lonely skirts of Saddleback and
Skiddaw. For the "Shepherd lord" improved the peel-tower above the
Wharfe into a sufficient residence for his doubtless modest estimate of
comfort and dignity, and there seems to have lead a life of retirement
for the next forty years, cultivating astronomy and the sciences. When
called to action, however, he was not wanting in ability and common
sense, and at sixty years of age had marched with the Yorkshiremen who
formed such an important element in Surrey's victorious army at Flodden.
He married twice, and his descendant Anne, Countess of Pembroke, who, by
an extraordinary succession of deaths, was left sole heiress of the
Clifford estates in the time of the Commonwealth, was a lady of enormous
strength of character. For when over sixty she returned to the north,
and in spite of Cromwell's protests, restored all her dilapidated
castles from Brougham by Keswick to this of Barden on the Wharfe, in
order that the sun of her race, for she had no heir, might set at least
in splendour. She took her seat, against all precedent and much
opposition, as High Sheriff of Westmoreland (a Clifford inheritance),
and sat upon the Bench between the judges of assize and did many other
racy and forcible things which we cannot tell of here.
The ruins of the Abbey, lifted on a gentle elevation about a hundred
yards from the rapid amber streams of the Wharfe, possess every charm of
situation that one would wish for in a relic of the great days of
ecclesiastical predominance with all its powers for good and evil, its
scorn of concentration in crowded haunts, its eye for the beautiful and
the remote, and for romantic streams where toothsome fish abound.
Bolton Hall, the Duke's residence, and the ancient Rectory lying upon
the same green meadow with venerable timber all about, and the stir and
glitter of the moorland waters in their wide bed,
[Illustration: THE WHARFE, BARDEN TOWER, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
make for a peace that in the many intervals when the groups of tourists
have gone on their way is as profound as one would ask for, and
throughout the six months of the year one may feel sure is practically
unbroken.
The Abbey, or, literally, Priory church and buildings, were begun in
1154 by a fraternity of the order of St. Augustine, under the endowment
of one William de Meschines, a Saxon by blood, and his Norman wife
Cecilia. The church was cruciform in shape, and is now all ruinous but
the nave which does duty as the parish church. It is more lofty than
common, and in the main Early English with some Decorated windows. But
an interesting feature is the west tower, whose completion, like that of
so many others, was prevented by the cataclysm of the Dissolution. It is
rather melancholy that a general ardour for further building in the
stateliest Perpendicular style should seem to have broken out just
before the shattering blow fell and left all over England so many
pathetic instances of incompleted work. Here in Bolton it is held by
those most intimate with its story that divine service has been
performed without any intermission since the foundation of the Abbey.
The nave was spared, it is said, at the dissolution of the House in
1539 for a parish church in consideration of the building having been
the site of an early Saxon chapel. There was at one time the usual
central tower. But as the ruinous choir and one transept now shows a
Decorated upper part and Norman base, it seems likely that the original
tower, like so many others, crashed down carrying ruin with it. The
Canons' stalls on each side of the choir under intersecting Norman
arches still remain, and as many on each side nearer the High Altar,
also under arches of the same period. The remains may be seen, too, of a
chantry opening into the south side of the choir through a highly
ornamental archway. This was the burial-place of the Cliffords of the
North, though it seems to have been ravaged of their remains.
The next valley going northward to the Wharfe is that of the Nidd--and
on a high plateau between these two rivers and not far from the latter
one, stands the great watering-place of Harrogate. Though possessing
none of the immediate beauty of outlook and environment enjoyed by
Buxton, Malvern, or Llandrindod, it has in addition to its invaluable
waters an atmosphere scarcely equalled in the kingdom for its
stimulating qualities. This is worthy of mention, as for any one
inclined to explore the Yorkshire dales in a general way, Harrogate is
a most admirable centre. Railways carry you from thence in a short time,
and upon special terms to practically all of them, leaving a long day to
be spent in the investigation of their beauties by any method that the
visitor may choose.
The Nidd is smaller than the other rivers. Its best-known point, partly
no doubt because it is near and accessible, is Knaresborough, a quaint
and clean old town which rises steeply in tiers and terraces above the
river bed, crowned by the ruins of a great castle which perches with
fine effect upon the summit of a lofty cliff that drops almost sheer
into the stream. Held back by a mill the naturally impetuous Nidd runs
in a deep and slow channel beneath the town. On its farther shore thick
woods fringe the water, and a lofty viaduct, not always an object of
beauty but here extremely effective, spans what may in this case be
fairly called the chasm. In these fringing woods are some curious
dripping crags which fossilize every article submitted to their
influence. Within them, too, there is a cave associated with the
celebrated Mother Shipton, and all conscientious pilgrims to
Knaresborough are ferried over the river and pay their respects to
these local deities, the more encouraged, no doubt, to such adventure by
the delightful woodland walk thereby entailed. The guide-books call
Knaresborough the "Switzerland of Yorkshire." It is difficult to imagine
for what reason unless it be that the town is essentially of the old
Yorkshire type, and that the castle is particularly characteristic of
the mediæval English fortress that was concerned with Scottish or Welsh
Border wars. It belonged in its day to many famous people, Hubert de
Burgh, Piers Gaveston, and John of Gaunt among them. But of chief
interest, perhaps, it was the refuge of the four knights who slew Thomas
à Becket. In later times, during the Civil War it stood a siege for the
King against the troops of Fairfax fresh from the victory of Marston
Moor, surrendering with honour. There is a fine church, too, containing
some interesting tombs and effigies of the now extinct Slingsby family,
who were prominent here for many centuries. Some of my readers will
remember the sensation caused throughout England, just forty years ago,
by the drowning of the last baronet and many companions as in the course
of a day's hunting they were capsized while crossing the river on a
ferry-boat.
[Illustration: THE NIDD, KNARESBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
The Nidd, though of much shorter course, runs down exactly parallel with
the Wharfe, one lofty wall of moors alone dividing them. A single-track
railroad runs high up the dale by the river-side to Pateley Bridge, and
is one of those instances alluded to in a former chapter that afford
frequent and charming views of what in this case is a fascinating and
wayward little moorland river, playing hide-and-seek among the meadows
and alders. The vale here is narrow, the hills on both sides steep
woodland or pasture-field to near their summits, where the outer rim of
the heathery moorlands falls down over the nearer ridge.
Pateley Bridge is a dark and sombre little town of miners and quarrymen,
but all around is beautiful. Upon the opposite or west bank of the
stream thick woods climb far up the hillsides, terminating in a line of
cliffs along whose brows the heathery edge of the moorland mantles. A
light railway, for serving more than one reservoir now in making amid
the moors, runs up to the head-waters of the Nidd, and is of further
assistance to the explorer of this fine country. Not far above Pateley
Bridge the Nidd disappears into an artificial lake some two miles long
which quite fills the narrow valley, and one learns with surprise that
this is merely compensation water for a much larger reservoir that the
Corporation of Bradford are in process of forming some miles higher up
for their actual supply. One gets up here into a wild and lonely
country. A reasonable day's walk across the high wall of moors to the
north or to the south would bring the traveller into Uredale or
Wharfedale respectively. But there is one considerable drawback to hill
walking in much of Yorkshire, for the grouse moors carry such a heavy
stock of birds, and are so valuable, that they are regarded almost as
sacred against the disturbing intruder as pheasant coverts, and are
constantly watched by keepers on this account.
The trees that most flourish in the woods, which clothe the slopes of
the lower hills in all these Yorkshire dales, till, with the shrinking
stream the country gets too high for any wealth of them, are the ash,
the sycamore, and the wych, or, as sometimes called, the "Scotch" elm.
Firs are effectively mingled with the others, but one sees less of the
stiff purely fir plantation looking down upon the Yorkshire rivers, than
in similar situations in Northumberland and Scotland. The hedges, too,
till you get right up into a stone wall country, have none of the
meagreness of those north of the Tyne, nor yet the prim trimness to
which the practical Scotsman reduces them, but they luxuriate here amid
the grass fields with almost the picturesque redundancy of the Midlands
and the south. The Nidd not far from Harrogate passes Ripley, chiefly
distinguished for the castle of the Ingilbys, a family seated there for
centuries, and whose chatelaine in the Civil War treated Cromwell, while
sheltering within it after Marston Moor, with a frigidity before which
even that man of iron is said to have quailed. Farther down the Nidd
runs into the Ouse, a few miles above York; and the Ouse is first formed
not very far again above this junction by the Ure and Swale, which are
the next two dales in the order mentioned, as we move still northward.
The Ure is quite a generous as well as a rapid stream, and requires
bridges of many arches to span it successfully. The little cathedral
city of Ripon is, of course, its presiding genius; a pleasant old
market-town of agricultural, clerical, and residential habit. It
manufactures nothing now of moment, though once upon a time it turned
out spurs by the thousand, known as Ripon rowels, which were in great
request among the Border prickers. The "Wakeman's horn" is still blown
at nine o'clock in the evening, a curious old custom among others that
are still cherished in a place which, like Richmond and Knaresborough,
looks an appropriate storehouse for such ancient survivals.
The Cathedral, though not among the most interesting, has many striking
characteristics, both historical and architectural. In the first sense,
it is memorable as virtually the foundation of one of the greatest of
northern ecclesiastics during the Saxon periods, namely, St. Wilfrid,
Bishop of Lindisfarne and Hexham, and for a time of York, but always
with a second home at his monastery of Ripon, where his dust lies; a man
of character, of varied and strenuous life, and of deathless fame from
Yorkshire to the Tweed. Upon, or near the site of Wilfrid's foundation,
the present structure was begun in the twelfth century. Like many others
of the great northern churches, it was burned by the Scots: in this
case, during the misfortunes to the English arms following the death of
Edward the First and the battle of Bannockburn. Only partially injured,
as was usual with such massive buildings, the central tower was rebuilt
in the next century, and in two more the almost inevitable, in the case
of mediæval
[Illustration: THE URE, NEAR RIPON, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
churches, happened, and the wooden spire of the tower crashed down and
destroyed the roof of the Choir. This so alarmed the authorities that
they removed the spires which then stood upon the two western towers. I
must not linger over the details of a cathedral here; but, in accordance
with an inclination throughout these pages, to say what little space
admits to be said of the less written of, and less hackneyed subjects
that confront us, I may pause to note that the West Front of Ripon, with
its severe but compact Early English windows, doorways, and arcading, is
the chief pride of the Cathedral. Archbishop Roger's Norman Nave was
supplanted by the present one in the Perpendicular period, but some of
his work, in the shape of three bays, may still be seen on the north
side of the Choir, which portion was not ruined by the fall of the
central tower after the Scottish burning. The rest of the Choir is
Perpendicular and Decorated, suggestive of the period following the
fiercest blaze of Anglo-Scottish hostility. Thus, as in most of our
northern churches, the varied styles do not merely proclaim the
procession--one must not say the progress--of the builder's art but tell
the story of domestic strife. The Chapter-house and Vestry supported by
a Crypt, however, are mainly Norman, and supposed to be of anterior
date even to Archbishop Roger's Church. Below the Nave is the most
singular thing in the whole church--a small Crypt of probably
seventh-century work, resembling that one beneath Wilfrid's other church
at Hexham, except that the latter is obviously made of stone taken from
Roman buildings. In both places they were probably used for the
exhibition of relics. Ripon is one of the smaller cathedrals, and also
rather encompassed by buildings, but being slightly elevated it makes a
fine picture from any point in the country round, standing well up above
the rest of the peaceful little town--particularly when the foreground
is occupied by the rapid streams of the Ure which are here of no mean
breadth.
Though not actually on the Ure but on its little tributary the Skell,
whose waters have been made to contribute so vastly to its adornment,
stands the most magnificent ecclesiastical ruin in England. If the Abbey
Church of Fountains, still roof high and the length of Ripon Cathedral,
with the mass of monastic buildings which in various stages of arrested
decay still surround it, has rivals, its beautiful environment and the
unique approach to it would dispose, I think, of their claims. Studley
Royal, the Marquis of Ripon's seat, is two miles from Ripon, and it is
through a couple more of park, laid out in the eighteenth century in
lavish arrangement of lake, lawn, walk, and woodland, that the visitor,
who for a shilling is free of practically the whole, approaches the
glorious remains of the great Cistercian house. There is not here, to be
sure, the wild natural beauty of Bolton, or Tintern; but it is landscape
gardening on such a prodigious scale, and so cunningly contrived, that
the picture of the vast and glorious fabric to which it leads bursts on
the visitor without warning in such fashion as to convey an irresistible
impression, whatever one's experiences may have been, that there is
nothing equal to it in England. This indeed is, I believe, the generally
accepted verdict.
For many miles above Ripon, the lower part in fact of the famous Wensley
dale, the Ure, sparkling often over broad shingly flats, runs through
but a slightly depressed fertile valley--the back-lying moors not as yet
pressing into prominent notice. Some half-dozen miles up the dale the
old Church and ruined Tower of Tanfield stand by the river bank. The
Tower and Gate House represent what is left of the ancient seat of the
Marmions, and the Church contains many of their tombs. Scott has thrown
such a halo round the name that, though we know out of his own mouth
that the grim and haughty warrior who fell at Flodden was the creation
purely of his own brain, I could tell of a true Marmion who, under a vow
to carry a fair lady's guerdon where danger was thickest, rode alone and
in cold blood beneath the walls of Norham Castle against a whole
squadron of Scottish horse, and was rescued alive by sheer good luck.
Three miles higher up is the extremely picturesque little town of
Masham, its old stone houses standing since times remote around the four
sides of a great square, and flanked by a fine church in which are the
monuments of Danby's former lords, and an extremely fine recumbent
alabaster effigy of Sir Thomas Wyvern, whose mother was a Scrope, which
historic family also once owned the manor. In the churchyard my eye fell
accidentally on two adjoining headstones. The one was "To the memory of
Christopher Craggs of Gilling-by-the-foot," the other to that of "Robert
Ayscough of Grimes Hall," and both ear and instinct seemed to provoke
the irrepressible reflection that nowhere outside Yorkshire could such a
sturdy harsh collection of names appear in combination. Four miles from
Masham, too, is another famous abbey, that
[Illustration: THE URE, AYSGARTH FORCE, YORKSHIRE]
of Jervaulx, to whose monks at one time this church and town belonged.
Wensley dale drags its beauteous length for many a long mile upward,
noted for its cheeses, its cobby horses, and its peculiar breed of
sheep; while, as only natural, so great a dairy country takes infinite
pride in its cattle. The grass land is of the finest quality, the farms
trim-looking, prosperous and well cared for. Middleham with its castle
sits upon the stream. Bolton Castle is near by, where Mary, Queen of
Scots, spent the first and pleasantest period of her confinement after
leaving Carlisle, and made every young gallant in the neighbourhood her
slave for life. At Bolton, too, a great square pile, the Scropes had
flourished since the days of that Archbishop who shook the throne of the
fourth Henry, and lost his head for it. Aysgarth Force--the latter word
of Norse origin and the equivalent in North Yorkshire and Durham for
waterfall--is the most conspicuous physical feature of the Ure, and with
its peaty waters is most happily portrayed on these pages by Mr. Sutton
Palmer. Far away in the high moors the Ure rises in a deep crevice of a
bog appropriately named Hell gill. Camden alludes to its source as in "a
dreary waste and horrid silent wilderness where goats, deer, and stags
of extraordinary size find a secure retreat." Nor has the region altered
much since Camden wrote save in the nature of its feræ. If England has
changed generally to such an extent that a mediæval monk of agricultural
bent would not recognise it in those moors and mountains at least which
we so rejoice in, and that the men of old not reared in them so hated,
we may still see the landscape almost as they saw it in every detail.
It is worth noting that the traveller journeying by train from Leeds to
Darlington crosses all of the rivers that water four out of the six West
Yorkshire dales, and at almost equal interludes, namely, the Wharfe, the
Nidd, the Ure, and the Swale; while the main line of the Great Northern
and North Eastern only crosses the Ouse, which is bearing, however, the
combined waters of all these tributary rivers seaward. Of these the last
and the most northerly, the Swale, is claimed by those who live upon it
to be the most consistently rapid. As the pace of all these Yorkshire
rivers is sufficient to give them all the qualities and the beauty of
mountain-born streams, such hair-splitting is of small interest. But the
Swale can claim, at any rate, the most romantically situated and most
picturesque old
[Illustration: THE SWALE, RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
town in Yorkshire, for Richmond might fairly be called a glorified
Knaresborough. It stands just within the hill country looking westward
over a sea of waving moorland interspersed with the contrasting
luxuriance of old abiding places. The town climbs up a long slope
crowned in turn by the massive Norman keep of the castle whose precincts
cover a broad plateau, while its curtain walls hang over the brink of a
rocky precipice, beneath which the Swale urges its clear impetuous
streams round a partial circuit of the town. Richmond is the centre of
an ancient district, once known and still often referred to as
"Richmondshire," a division of Northumbria, later on, with its two
hundred manors, termed "The Honour of Richmond." A marked historical
peculiarity of this district is that from the Norman Conquest till the
time of Henry VII. it was a fief of the Dukes of Brittany, who included
the Earldom of Richmond in their titles. On this account Richmond became
occasionally a fief of the King of France, not breaking with this
curious foreign ownership till the Tudor period, when France and
Brittany were united. This overlordship, however, so far as the life of
the district was concerned, is a matter of purely academic interest.
Many people will no doubt be surprised to learn that the nowadays more
conspicuous Richmond on the Thames took its name while a hamlet from the
Yorkshire town. While to turn to comparative but familiar trifles the
well-known eighteenth-century song, "The Lass of Richmond Hill," does
not refer to a suburban maiden but to Frances l'Anson, the daughter of a
rich London solicitor who had estates in Yorkshire and for a country
residence "Hill House," still standing on high ground above the town.
The author was a barrister, one Leonard Mac Nally, who subsequently in
1787 married the subject of his impassioned ode, and the song was first
sung at Vauxhall. It is worth noting too, perhaps, that Byron's wife,
Miss Milbanke, a yet more famous beauty, came also from the Hill House
at Richmond.
The town is the centre of a great agricultural and pastoral district.
Market-day in its spacious, old-fashioned market-place, on the high
slope of the town, is an animated spectacle. Purveyors from the
manufacturing districts, which, though left now a long way behind us in
actual distance, are comparatively near by rail, throng here to purchase
supplies. It is a country of small and moderate-sized farmers, all of
whom, however, are of sufficient substance to
[Illustration: THE SWALE, RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
keep a trap of some kind, and in no market-town in any part of England
within my experience, which is pretty considerable, have I ever seen
such long arrays of unhorsed vehicles awaiting the termination of their
owner's business transaction or his social obligations. This is the most
characteristic and spacious part of Richmond, and the stone houses of
commerce which border it have an unmistakable flavour of antiquity in
spite of the touching up and re-fronting which is inevitable to even a
rural market-town not prepared to accept commercial and physical decay.
On one side of the market-place is the ancient Church of the Trinity,
between the tower and body of which an entire house and shop intervene,
while the Gallery which adorns the interior rests upon more shops. The
Curfew Bell is rung in this, which was probably the old parish church,
both morning and evening, the situation of the house of the town-crier
being so conveniently situated that he is said to be able to ring the
morning bell from his bed, an advantage of incalculable significance.
The parish church, however, stands near the foot of the hill, restored
beyond the bounds of any great surviving interest. There is an old
grammar school, too, with some new buildings erected in honour of a
famous headmaster who flourished near a century ago, Dr. Tate, Canon of
St. Paul's, whose scholarship and personality made his name and his
school famous throughout the north, and keeps his memory yet green. Most
interesting of Richmond's ecclesiastical monuments, however, is the fine
Perpendicular tower that alone remains of its monastery of the Grey
Friars. It was only just finished at the Dissolution, and is
pathetically suggestive of the Litchfield tower at Evesham, and one or
two other unconsciously expiring efforts of pious Abbots.
But the castle is, of course, the most interesting spot in Richmond, to
a stranger at any rate, for the beautiful views, above all from the top
of the keep over 100 feet high, which it affords of this moorland
country on the one side and the fatter central vale of Mowbray on the
other; and again away beyond this to the Cleveland Hills, and the high
country on the north-east of the county, while on a clear day the towers
of York Minster are distinctly visible. Up the valley of the Swale down
which the surging waters of the river, after stormy weather, gleam in
their green meadowy trough beneath the folding hills, the outlook hence
is indeed a very memorable one. The high castle-yard
[Illustration: THE SWALE, RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
covers five acres, and though in partial use by the depôt of the
Yorkshire regiment as sergeants' quarters, is quiet and spacious enough
and partly surrounded by the remains, in various stages of ruin, of ward
rooms, chapels, state rooms, kitchens, and the curtain-walls of this
once great and proudly placed fortress. Here again the artist will give
a better notion of the distinction of Richmond, its fine pose above the
river with the old bridge as a foreground, than any amount of
description. But there are many old tortuous by-streets and wynds on the
steep slopes of Richmond well worth exploring. And as "Brave Pudsay"
made a famous leap from the top of a cliff into or over the Ribble, so
here one Williance has likewise immortalised himself and given his name
to a height above the Swale outside the town. This leap was almost
contemporary with that of Pudsay, and some special providence indeed
must have watched over these redoubtable Elizabethans. But Williance's
performance was not prompted by the pursuing peril of a sheriff's posse,
but by a runaway horse at a hunting party. The hero himself was a
successful trader of Ripon, and, as indicated above, his horse bolted in
a fog and leaped from the top of Whitecliff scaur, falling on a ledge
100 feet below and thence toppling over another precipice of similar
height. The horse was killed, but the rider, marvellous to relate,
escaped with a broken leg. Getting out his hunting-knife he ripped open
the dead animal's belly and put the injured limb inside it to keep the
cold out till help arrived. This hardy and resourceful person saved his
life at any rate, but not his leg, which was amputated. In gratitude for
his miraculous escape he set up three stones upon the spot, inscribing
them with his thanks to the Almighty. He buried his leg in the
churchyard, and ten years later was himself laid beside it as Alderman
of Richmond, a man of note and substance, as his will shows; and a piece
of plate bequeathed to the Corporation is still in their possession.
Nothing need be said, or rather nothing can be said, here of the upper
course of the Swale growing wilder as it approaches its romantic source
upon the borders of Westmoreland in the clefts of the Pennine range
above Kirby Stephen. A mile or more down the river from Richmond, set
upon the edge of the stream, whose amber waters here as everywhere fret
and foam beside them, stand the still ample ruins of Easby Abbey.
Founded in 1152, it was richly endowed by the Scropes, many
[Illustration: THE SWALE, EASBY ABBEY, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
of whom lie here in untraceable graves. It was occupied by Canons of the
Præmonstratentian Order. The entrance gateway is still practically
perfect, and throughout the buildings there are evidences of
considerable magnificence: fine window tracery, groined arches, and the
walls of one room of the monastery over 100 feet long, still in good
preservation. Large portions of the Guesting hall, the Frater house, and
the Chapter-house are standing. The mass, as a whole, makes a most
imposing picture in this scene of quiet peace beside the babbling river.
To say that one Yorkshire dale is like another would be a poor way of
expressing the fact that all are beautiful to those over whom moorlands
and solitude cast their spell--the present writer, as no doubt will have
been gathered from these pages, belonging very much to that particular
following. So with the reader's leave we will conclude this chapter on
Yorkshire rivers with a few words about the most northerly, and in some
ways the most distinguished of all of them, to wit, the Tees. However
much moderns may carp at Sir Walter Scott's free-flowing verse, he
struck the note that flings the glamour of action and romance over
natural scenery in a way that no other British poet of recent times has
approached. Comparison, though, is of course absurd. It is easy enough
to pick to pieces, under the canons of poetic art, Scott's simple
stirring rhyme and his pages of sustained cadence. Swinburne was
undoubtedly a greater poet. Swinburne, too, was a Northumbrian of
Northumbrians by birth, and has written several much-admired poems on
the Borderland of his fathers, but the poet lived for choice in Putney.
Genius though Swinburne was, it is not in the least likely that his
verse will in any way contribute to the greater glory of Rede or
Tyne--nor in his case because it lacks lucidity, cadence, or vigour, or
is in the least obscure. Perhaps as a rough basis for deductions that we
are not concerned with, and which, after all, are dependent on varying
temperaments, one may remark that it is impossible to conceive Walter
Scott living in a London suburb! The personality of the man is so
absolutely in harmony with the atmosphere through which his stirring
verses move. That atmosphere is essentially of the North--not the North
of an August holiday as interpreted by some minor poet of "precious"
utterance, who probably despises Scott, but a rugged all-the-year-round
North, rejoiced in by a son of the soil with a mind imaginative,
[Illustration: High Force, Tees, Yorkshire]
[Illustration]
robust, and racy. Here was a genius that baffles all the latter-day
critics who, with easy logic, pulverise the hopelessly lucid and
deplorably musical measures of _Marmion_ or the _Lady of the Lake_. They
have much within them, no doubt, but not the root of the matter to which
Scott appeals, and it is their misfortune. They could not see the Tweed,
the Tees, or a northern dale through the glasses in which Scott beheld
them to save their lives. The sense is denied them, withered possibly in
the attenuated atmosphere of a hot-house civilization. Whether the
appeal of Scott can be called popular in the ordinary meaning, I doubt;
but there are thousands of persons even yet to whom the sense is not
denied, and to whom a landscape or a noble sweep of river valley is not
merely a subject for a painter's brush or for a sonnet, but something
infinitely more. A sense of the past would inadequately perhaps
represent the quality of the missing ingredient, and one, much more
often implanted than cultivated in the human breast, which those denied
it cannot distinguish from what appears to them a merely tiresome taste
for history or archæology, but is in fact a deep emotion. Scott, of
course, had it prodigiously, and his appeal is made to those who,
without his gifts, share in this particular his temperament. To such at
least he is infinitely and always stimulating. He is absolutely the
right man in the right place. If his verse has the demerit of being
lucid and musical, he is not assuming to interpret Nature, to suggest
problems, or to pronounce conundrums. Your mood wants none of the two
last, and may have its own conceptions of the first. But Scott is
playing, as it were, a fine melody in harmony with the streams, the
mountains, and the woods, and you feel that the musician is a master of
his subject. The music may not be classical, but somehow it makes every
subject that it touches classic. The Upper Tees has been thus illumined.
_Rokeby_, to be sure, is not so inspiring a lay as _Marmion_, nor so
familiar. But it has at least made the Tees classic ground. The songs,
no doubt, are forgotten. Two or three generations have passed away since
young ladies sang in drawing-rooms of how "Brignall woods were fresh and
fair and Greta woods were green," and that they would "rather rove with
Edmund there than reign an English Queen," and were succeeded at the
piano by young gentlemen with melting tenors who replied with:
O Lady, twine no wreath for me,
Or twine it of the Cypress tree.
These were but the culled flowers of the lay which in six cantos
achieved a wide popularity and took Scott sixteen months to write. For
myself, I turn to the Tees with a touch of personal sentiment that in my
case the other Yorkshire streams do not arouse--for the simple but
sufficient reason that it was my privilege in youth, and with the
glamour of _Rokeby_ fresher, alas! than now, to follow the river more
than once to its fountain-head, and to spend more than one night in
rough quarters amid the dalesmen within sound of the thunder of Cauldron
Snout.
The Tees rises under Crossfell, that monarch of the Pennine range whose
rounded summit contrasts so painfully with the rugged crests of the Lake
mountains, whose altitude it emulates beyond the Eden. But for the whole
10 miles of its course, before it makes the fine though broken plunge of
200 feet at Cauldron Snout, its surroundings are wild indeed--a waste of
rolling moors and of black bogs carrying great stocks of grouse; while
below Cauldron, in the partially tamed treeless valley spreading
downwards to High Force, are specks of whitewashed houses flecking here
and there the bare stone-wall country. As the Tees approaches the cliff
at the Cauldron, it lingers for a long distance in a most unnaturally
sluggish deep, black and gloomy in appearance from the peaty water and
known as the Weald, or Wheale. Great trout, in contrast to the little
fellows in the rapid streams below the falls, were supposed to lurk
here, and expectancy, when a wind curled its surly surface, accompanied
the alighting cast--with but slight justification, if memory serves me
right. Some of the highest fells in Yorkshire are about us here,
Micklefell reaching the altitude of 2600 feet. Below the falls the Maze
beck runs in, of importance merely as dividing the counties of
Westmoreland and Yorkshire, and, as the east bank of the Tees is in
Durham, creating a point where three counties meet. An extremely
probable incident used to be told of a sportsman who had flushed some
grouse or partridges in Durham, having dropped his right bird in
Westmoreland and his left in Yorkshire.
From Cauldron Snout to the great falls of the Tees at High Force is
about 6 miles, and the bed of the river is thickly obstructed for much
of the way by the roundest and most slippery boulders I have ever
encountered in any mountain river, the brown water slipping in a
thousand obscure runlets between them.
[Illustration: THE TEES, COTHERSTONE, YORKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
The whitewash which has always marked the Duke of Cleveland's buildings
is distinctly effective on the wide treeless waste, while some fine
crags known as Falcon Clints follow its course and overlook the Tees on
the Yorkshire side. High Force is fortunately depicted on these pages
more effectively than words could serve such a purpose. Cauldron Snout
is, I think, the highest cataract in England with any volume of water,
and High Force is certainly the finest one on a good-sized river, no
slight vaunt for a single stream within the space of half a dozen miles.
A good deal has been done in the way of ornamental planting around High
Force, while a hotel, once a shooting-box of the Duke of Cleveland, has
stood here ever since I can remember.
One is now getting into the _Rokeby_ country, for a few miles down is
Middleton, a large village and the chief centre of Upper Teesdale.
Looming on the west are the wild highlands of Lune and Stainmore
forests. To the east are more wilds that lead over to the Wear valley at
St. John's and Stanhope, while near Middleton comes in the "silver Lune
from Stainmore wild." The Tees grows apace in volume, and at Barnard
Castle both the famous fortress and the fast-swelling river contribute
to the measure and quality of the striking picture they together make.
The castle stands on the Durham bank of the Tees and derives its name
from its Scottish founder, Barnard Balliol. Like every other northern
fortress, particularly as one on the wrong side of the river, it had its
troubles in the long Scottish wars and raids. The county of Durham, the
fat palatinate of an always mighty bishop, was struck at by every
generation of Scottish raiders that broke through the Northumbrian
marches. Like many other castles in this country, too, it was brought to
Richard III. by his wife Anne Neville. The visitor may still climb the
tower with Scott's Warder and survey the beauteous scene with, no doubt,
a far greater measure of appreciation than any felt by that romantic
figure.
Where Tees full many a fathom low
Wears with his rage no common foe,
Nor pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here,
Nor clay mound checks his fierce career.
Condemned to mine a channell'd way
O'er solid sheets of marble grey.
This applies to the course of the river a little below Barnard Castle,
where the hard limestone is freely mixed with marble and gives a fine
blend of colouring to the bed of the river.
[Illustration: THE TEES, BARNARD CASTLE, DURHAM]
[Illustration]
From this same castle tower, too, in the words of Scott:
Nor Tees alone in dawning bright
Shall rush upon the ravished sight,
But many a tributary stream
Each from its own dark dell shall gleam.
But the Greta, on whose banks Rokeby, as well as the fortified
manor-house of Mortham, still in good repair, are situated, comes in
just below Barnard Castle; a lovely stream roaring between rocky
terraces, sweeping the base of limestone cliffs and burrowing in the
dark shadow of luxuriant woods. The beautiful grounds of Rokeby which
include the Greta are much, I think, as they were when Scott stayed here
with his friend Mr. Morritt the owner.
There has always seemed to me a suggestion of bathos in associating the
scene of Rokeby and Greta banks with _Nicholas Nickleby_ and the hideous
but world-famous picture of Dotheboys Hall. But the great old bare
posting-house at Greta Bridge, where Dickens stayed, is still standing
and much furbished up as the "Morritt Arms." There seems no doubt that
this Arcadian corner of Yorkshire had a justifiably evil reputation for
institutions of the kind. In a letter written from here by Dickens to
his wife but eight years after _Rokeby_ was published, he describes with
some humour having actually travelled up on the coach with the
proprietress of one of them who gradually drank herself into a state of
happy insensibility. One would fain, I think, associate the Tees with
the flavour of _Rokeby_ rather than of Dotheboys Hall, with Bertram
rather than with Squeers! A spot more profoundly out of touch with a
Dickens atmosphere it would be difficult to find in all England. The
ruins of Eggleston Abbey are here too on the banks of Tees, and the
remains of a Roman station at Greta Bridge. These upper reaches by no
means exhaust either the beauty or the interest of the Tees, but
henceforth the scenery becomes lower and less inspiring, and the high
romance fades as the river pursues a more conventional course towards
the busy town of Darlington.
[Illustration: THE STOUR, BERGHOLT, SUFFOLK]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE OUSE, NEAR ST. IVES, HUNTINGDONSHIRE]
[Illustration]