we are confronted with rather a startling notice board: "No Road." It
seems a little late to tell us that now: they might have mentioned it
before we crossed the pass! Then it dawns upon us that the amateur hand
that traced the letters has sloped the board in the wrong direction.
It is really meant to face down the valley, for the discouragement of
those who might stray up from Swaledale, ignorant of the pass.
Swaledale, I think, is the most beautiful of all the dales. Of course
beauty varies with the weather, and distant Muker in the hollow of the
hills cannot be the same on a colourless, grey day as when it lies in
a pool of sunshine. But on any day Swaledale must seem, to one who
is fresh from the elemental dignity of the pass, to hold a wonderful
variety of lovely things: opal hills and soft woods, patches of heather
and slopes of fern, fir-trees and feathery birches and clumps of
scarlet rowans. There are individual pictures that one remembers as
types of the whole. At Gunnerside, for instance, where the road crosses
the Swale, cliffs rise from the stony river-bed, and are crowned with
overhanging trees, the banks are smothered in masses of burdock leaves,
and the whole scene is encircled by the hills. The road is not very
good, and there are some steep pitches between Gunnerside and Reeth;
but it matters little, for who would care to hurry through such a land
as this?
[Illustration: THE SWALE.]
It was on the road near Low Row that John Wesley began his preaching in
this part of the world, standing on a table by the wayside. A little
further on is Helaugh, once a gayer place than it is at present. The
hills above it have echoed many a time to the winding of the horn, when
John of Gaunt was lord here and went out to chase the boar. Later on
these lands belonged to that strange Duke of Wharton, "the scorn and
wonder" of Pope's day, who was a Whig when it was unfashionable and a
Jacobite when it became dangerous, who fought against his country and
died a monk.
"Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule?
'Twas all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool."
At Reeth, a fascinating place built on a slope at the mouth of
Arkengarth Dale, we cross the river again, and find a much better road
on the other side.
Between Reeth and Richmond the Swale, flowing softly past its richly
wooded banks, is as beautiful as the lower Wye. On the further side
of it we see the Norman tower of Marrick Priory, where once twelve
blackrobed nuns lived only a mile away from their "white-clothid"
sisters of Ellerton. The nuns of Marrick were fortunate, for though
they were so few they won a short respite for some unknown reason, and
were allowed to stay in their beautiful retreat till the dissolution of
the larger monasteries. There are few places in England, I think, that
would be easier to love and harder to leave than Swaledale.
Richmond, on its hill, guards the mouth of the valley. This first view
of it from Swaledale, with the tower of the castle rising slowly into
sight, gives no idea at all of the beauty and strength that have made
it famous. We only know how Richmond has won its name when we see it
from below, with the buttressed bridge in the foreground, and the
bright waters of the Swale reflecting the houses that are clustered at
their brink, and the sun-flecked path under the trees, and the roofs,
tier above tier, climbing the steep hillside, and above them all--foe
of their foes and shelter of their friends--the long curtain-wall and
towering keep of the castle. This view of Richmond has been praised
so much that one fears disappointment. Yet one is not disappointed.
Richmond is not only beautiful: it has that other quality--so much more
important than beauty in woman or town--the quality of charm. Richmond
is lovable.
It was the Normans who first took advantage of this fine position for
a fortress: the Saxon owners of the place were the Earls of Mercia,
and had no castle here, for Gilling, their headquarters in the north,
was only a few miles away. We may dream, if we like, that Ethelfled,
the soldierly daughter of Alfred the Great, and Godiva, the Lady of
Coventry, visited this place when their husbands were minded to chase
the wolf or the boar in this part of their lands. It is possible that
they did so: but there is no authentic history of Richmond before
the time when Alan the Breton received from his kinsman, William the
Conqueror, "at the siege before York," a grant of "all the towns and
lands which lately belonged to Earl Edwin in Yorkshire." It was this
Alan who began to build the castle. We may not enter it without
permission, for it is now used as barracks; but we can walk up to
the gateway at the foot of the great keep and see its buttresses and
turrets towering above us; and we can follow the path that surrounds
the walls and look at the view that George IV. admired so much. This
view of the river from the castle is very pretty, but is by no means
comparable to the view of the castle from the river. Possibly George
IV. fixed his eyes upon the Culloden Tower among the trees to the
right, and was biassed by association.
Three times this castle wall behind us has imprisoned a king. When
five English knights and their men-at-arms made their dashing march to
Alnwick and captured William the Lion of Scotland, it was to Richmond
they brought him; and David Bruce, another Scottish king, was here
nearly two hundred years later; and the third was Charles I. Legend,
indeed, tells us of a fourth king still imprisoned here; for this
castle rock is one of the many places wherein King Arthur lies asleep
with all his knights, awaiting the magic blast upon the horn that shall
some day wake him. The Breton folk say he waits beneath the island of
Agalon; the Welsh look for him to come forth from among the mountains
of Glamorganshire.
[Illustration: RICHMOND.]
Soon after Bruce's imprisonment the castle seems to have fallen into
disrepair; and this, I suppose, was the reason that John of Gaunt, who
was Lord of Richmond, made his hunting expeditions from Helaugh rather
than from here. Harry of Richmond, when he became Henry VII., gave this
castle of his to his mother, and finding that the "mantill wall" was
"in decay of maisone wark," and "all the doyers, wyndoys, and other
necessaries," with much beside, were also in decay, he gave orders that
the whole should "be new refresshede."
Though this attractive town possesses much, it has also lost much. Once
it had a wall--built to keep the Scots out--and several gates; but all
are gone now, except the postern in Friar's Wynd, and the old pointed
arch of Bargate, which we may see from the foot of Carnforth Hill.
Gone, too, is the elaborate cross, which, according to all accounts,
was an object of beauty in the paved market-place. This is more than
can be said for the strange obelisk that has supplanted it. But in this
same market-square still stands Holy Trinity Chapel--not beautiful,
but very ancient, being that "chapel in Richemont toune" which, Leland
says, had "straung figures in the waulles of it. The people there
dreme," he goes on, "that it was ons a temple of idoles." Some even
dream that this chapel was founded by Paulinus, the seventh-century
saint, in memory of an occasion when he baptized an enormous number of
converts in the Swale; but, as Bede says the ceremony took place in the
river because it was impossible to build oratories "in those parts,"
this dream is not very credible. It is no dream, I believe, but a fact,
that the chapel stands on the site of a Danish temple. In its walls
there are now no strange figures of "idoles," but some very strange
_annexes_ for a chapel. A butcher's shop is wedged between the tower
and the nave, and several other shops are built into its side.
One of the most notable things here is the Grey Friars' Tower, which
we passed on entering the town from Swaledale: a peculiarly slender and
graceful piece of Perpendicular work. Like the campanile at Evesham, it
stands alone because the building of the church connected with it was
suddenly brought to an end by the Dissolution. The Franciscans who had
their friary here were mostly put to death or imprisoned for life--yet
not for long--because they thought it their duty to obey St. Francis
rather than Henry VIII.
There are remains of another religious house quite close to Richmond.
Very little is left at Easby of the abbey church of St. Agatha, but the
position of the ruins beside the river is full of quiet charm. Those
who dwelt here were Premonstratensian Canons, whose rather confusing
order was founded by the German visionary St. Norbert, and whose white
garments were chosen for them by the Virgin herself. They passed
to their dormitory through the Norman archway with the ornamented
mouldings, the last remaining fragment of the original twelfth-century
building raised by Roald, the Constable of Richmond. Until lately a
very decorative tree grew up through this archway and figured in every
picture of Easby, but it threatened to break down the masonry, and so
was sacrificed. It is a sad loss to artists. But the last memorial of
Roald would have been a loss still sadder, for, even as it is, Roald is
often forgotten in favour of the Scropes, who practically rebuilt St.
Agatha's. Their shield is still over the porch of the parish church, a
hundred yards away; their dust lies under the rough sods to the west of
the north transept. At Wensley we saw the carved sides of what was once
their parclose.
We finally leave the town by the same road that leads to Easby, turning
off to the left to join the great Roman highway beyond Gilling. It was
just here, where the roads fork, that the Lass of Richmond Hill lived
in the eighteenth century, till she married the writer of the song; and
hither, too, to the same Hill House, came later songs, greater than
MacNally's--songs from Byron to his future wife, Miss Milbank. Our last
view of Richmond, from _Maison Dieu_, is worthy of remembrance. The
town is spread before us with all its towers; the slender Grey Friars'
Tower, the church, the soaring keep; and in the background of hills is
the green gap that means so much to those who have lost their hearts
to Swaledale. That is behind us now; and on the right is stretched the
great green plain of central Yorkshire--the plain that divides the
western moors from the moors of Clevedon and Hambledon. Somewhere in
that plain is the Great North Road.
Soon after passing Lord Zetland's place, Aske Hall, we drive through
the wide street of Gilling, the little village of gardens, where there
is nothing left, except a few Saxon stones, to remind us that the great
Earls of Mercia made it one of their capitals till Alan of Brittany
laid it waste. A little way beyond it we turn a sharp corner and are
on the Roman road. After speeding along this for some minutes it is
interesting to look back and see the amazing straightness of the white
streak that stretches away behind the car and disappears over the crest
of the hill. The scenery is dull at first; but presently a new line
of moors and dales appears on the horizon, and the roadway itself is
shaded with trees and fringed with grass and flowers. Meantime the
surface is enough in itself to make a motorist happy.
The car glides up the slope of a little bridge; we pass a screen
of trees; and the extreme beauty of the Greta is revealed with a
suddenness that is almost startling. This bridge with the stone parapet
is the famous Greta Bridge; this is the stream painted by Turner and
sung by Scott; there by the roadside are the gates of Rokeby.
"Oh, Brignall banks are fresh and fair,
And Greta woods are green!"
Brignall banks are not in sight, but here are Greta woods--intensely
green--flinging their branches across the river till they meet and
interlace in an archway over the clear water and the yellow stones.
[Illustration: GRETA BRIDGE.]
At the northern limit of Rokeby Park we must leave the highway. There
is a road here that is not marked on Bartholomew's map--a road that
turns to the right and leads to Mortham Tower, and the Dairy Bridge,
and the meeting of the Greta and the Tees. The "battled tower" of
Mortham is now inhabited; we may not see the bloodstains on the stairs;
but from a little distance the fifteenth-century peel and the Tudor
buildings that surround it make a pretty group. Below the grassy knoll
on which it stands the Greta dashes down between its overshadowing
banks and veiling foliage to join the quieter, statelier Tees.
The beauty of this place is really haunting. Sir Walter Scott has
described every inch of it in "Rokeby," with complete accuracy if with
no great inspiration. For the wild sweetness of this spot is not such
as can be put into words. It is a place of enchantment, where the
spell-bound poet can only stammer helplessly, and the plain man for a
moment feels himself a poet.
Returning to the main road, we follow the wooded Tees to Barnard
Castle. For miles the river is as we saw it at the meeting of the
waters, darkly shadowed by trees and bound by rocky banks; more
beautiful in itself than Wharfe or Swale, though flowing through a
valley that cannot be compared to the other dales except at its head:
but there, I think, excelling them all. Through the greater part of
Teesdale the beauty of the river is so closely confined to its banks
that we only catch a glimpse of it now and then, when actually crossing
the stream. One of these glimpses we have from the toll-bridge just
below Eggleston Abbey, where we cross for a few minutes into the county
of Durham. The ruins of the abbey are visible through the trees,
standing on a grassy hill upon the Yorkshire bank of the river.
[Illustration: THE DAIRY BRIDGE.]
At Barnard Castle--which is not a very attractive town at first sight,
and is sorely disfigured by its portentous museum--we again cross the
Tees into Yorkshire, near the point where the familiar towers of the
Baliols' ruined fortress stand high above the river on their cliff.
This commanding position was granted to the Norman Guy de Baliol by
Rufus, and Guy's son Bernard raised on it the castle that was forfeited
by his descendant. This Bernard was no friend to the throne on which
the later Baliol sat, for he was the most zealous of the five knights
who captured William of Scotland and took him to Richmond Castle. When
the enterprise seemed about to fail, it was Bernard who cried: "If
you should all turn back, I would go on alone!" A little more than a
hundred years later John Baliol, King of Scotland, was rashly refusing
to be at the beck and call of the English king. "Has the fool done this
folly?" asked Edward. "If he will not come to us we will come to him!"
So John lost his crown, and Barnard Castle saw the Baliols no more. It
was given to the Nevilles, and so with many other things fell into the
capacious hands of Richard III., who actually lived here for a time,
and has left his symbol, the wild boar, upon the oriel window.
There is one gracious memory that makes these towers sacred. The ruined
halls are haunted by the presence of that gentle and sad lady who was
the widow of one John Baliol and the mother of another--Devorgilla,
daughter of kings, foundress of Baliol College, and in her endless
sorrow the builder of Dulce Cor. When her husband died she "had his
dear heart embalmed and enshrined in a coffer of ivory, enamelled and
bound with silver bright, which was placed before her daily in her hall
as her sweet, silent companion." It was here at Bernard Castle that she
chiefly lived with that silent companion, until the noble shrine of
stone was ready to receive the ivory coffer; it was here she lived on
alone, till she too died and was carried out to be buried in Sweetheart
Abbey, with John Baliol's "dear heart" upon her breast.
Of the two roads to Middleton-in-Teesdale the one on the Durham side is
the best as regards both surface and scenery; but the greater number
of those who drive up Teesdale will return to Barnard Castle before
going on their way to the north or crossing Yorkshire to the coast,
and will probably prefer to drive up the valley by one road and come
down it again on the other. On the Yorkshire side there is nothing very
striking. Lartington is pretty, and gay with flowers; Cotherstone still
has a fragment of the FitzHughs' castle in a field above the river;
Romaldkirk has an interesting church. Beyond Mickleton we cross the
Lune, which is a miniature copy of the Tees, with the same rocky bed
and the same close screen of overarching boughs. A few minutes later we
cross the Tees itself and are in Middleton.
The road from Middleton to High Force is surprisingly populous. Here
among the hills, where the fields are yielding to moorland, and
the river flows under bare crags, one expects a certain amount of
loneliness; yet here is a broad and civilised highway, with all the
character of a road near some large town. The scenery, however, is
wild enough; and more beautiful than anything we have seen. Beyond the
river--open now to the sky, no longer veiled by trees--rise the moors,
piled high, fold upon fold, grand in outline and glorious in colour,
green and purple and crimson. A wood by the wayside blots out river and
hills for a moment; then suddenly through a gap we see High Force.
Looking down from the road we see it as a picture framed in trees: the
solid wall of rock, the leap of the foaming waters, the cloud of spray,
the fir-trees with their spires against the sky, the crimson moors
beyond. That white torrent is the boundary of the county, the crown and
climax of the beauty of Yorkshire, and our last and most perfect memory
of the dales.
[Illustration: HIGH FORCE.]
THE COAST
SUMMARY OF TOUR ALONG THE COAST
DISTANCES.
Yarm
Saltburn 21 miles
Whitby 21 "
Scarborough 25 "
Total 67 miles
ROADS
Hills very steep and frequent near coast.
Surface usually good.
[Illustration: THE CLIFF, STAITHES.]
II
THE COAST
When one is approaching the coast of Yorkshire from the north, the
important thing is to avoid the manufacturing towns of Stockton and
Middlesbrough. This can be done by crossing the Tees at Yarm, and
joining the splendid road that runs so straightly from this point
to the sea. Those who have come from the dales will notice at once,
even in Yarm, how greatly the houses here differ from the houses of
the west. In that fair land the buildings, both small and great, have
the character common to moorland buildings: they are stern and sturdy
and grey; made not to please the eye, but to endure the buffetings of
wind and rain. But these houses of the plain, it seems, do their best
to provide the beauty that is lacking in scenery. They are warm and
picturesque, red and tiled and gabled, a feature in the landscape. The
wide street of Yarm, with its trees and grass and pretty buildings,
has almost a foreign air. Beyond it is the straight road with the
magnificent surface.
The views from this road, to right and left, are rather striking, each
in its own way. On the left the scene is not beautiful, yet not without
romance--the romance that is hidden under so much that is ugly. That
long, long line of tall chimneys and distant masts, that cloud of smoke
that darkens all the sky, are symbols of the spirit of adventure,
of the love of enterprise, of untiring progress, of belief in the
future; for surely the history of our commerce has included all these
things. It was from Stockton that the first railway in the world ran to
Darlington; and in Middlesbrough many of our merchant ships are built.
Eighty years ago about a hundred people lived there: to-day there are a
hundred thousand under that black pall.
To the right of us is an equally long line of another sort--the line
of the Cleveland Moors. The curious excrescence of Roseberry Topping
is conspicuous from the first, and even at this distance the monument
to Captain Cook is visible on the hillside. For it was in the little
village of Marton, through which we pass on our way to Guisborough,
that James Cook was born, and learnt his lessons in the village school
when not employed in scaring crows. Roseberry Topping, at first sight,
looks like a huge tumulus. "It is the landmark that directs sailers,
and a prognostick to the neighbours hereabouts." The view from its
summit has been described by many writers, with degrees of enthusiasm
varying from the "most agreeable prospect" of Camden to the ardour of
another traveller, who declared that "there you may see a vewe the
like whereof I never saw, or thinke that any traveller hath seene any
comparable unto yt." A certain discreet author, quoting these words a
hundred years ago, says gravely: "Accurate observation and comparison
forbid us to ratify this assertion in its full extent."
The base of Roseberry Topping is largely composed of alum. In the reign
of Elizabeth some alum works were set up at Guisborough, but were
solemnly cursed by the Pope. His Holiness, it transpired, was himself
the owner of some alum works.
The actual streets of Guisborough are not attractive, but seen from a
distance the general effect of the little place is rather charming. It
lies in a valley with the hills of Cleveland behind it, and towering
above it is the great east window of its priory, bereft so entirely
of tracery that it has the air of some stately gateway. This lovely
fragment, this graceful window with its pinnacles and crockets, is
all, except a Norman gateway, that is left of the burial-place of the
English Bruces--the once rich and famous Augustinian priory whose
buildings covered acres of ground, and whose prior "kept a most
pompous house." At least two churches that have stood upon this spot
were destroyed by fire, but it was not fire that caused this final
destruction; not, as in one of the other cases, the conduct of "a
vile plumber with a wicked disposition"; not even primarily the zeal
of Henry VIII.'s commissioner; but the vandalism of one Chaloner,
who bought it and hacked it to pieces. It was he who built the alum
works that were so distasteful to the Pope, and it is quite possible
that some of the stones of this Gothic masterpiece were used for the
purpose. If this were the case, one could forgive the Pope for his
methods of carrying on business.
At Skelton, over there on the hill, lived the Bruces of the English
branch, who founded the priory. Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII.
and wife of James IV. of Scotland, raised a splendid cenotaph here to
her husband's ancestors, the Bruces of Annandale and Skelton, only a
short time before her brother made the place desolate for ever. The
cenotaph was moved to the parish church, and was broken up in the
eighteenth century. Until quite lately pieces of it were scattered in
various parts of the church and priory, but it has now been restored
with great care and set up near the west door of the church, with all
its statues of Scottish and English Bruces except that of the greatest
Bruce of all. King Robert's figure, it is believed, was on the west end
that has long been lost. There is some fine old glass in this church,
and a modern window of exceptional beauty.
Guisborough is not a place to stay in; but only six miles away is
Saltburn with all its hotels. The short drive thither is pretty, and
close to the wayside on the right is Upleatham Church, the smallest
used for services in England, with a miniature tower and a nave about
fifteen feet long. Saltburn is a rising watering-place, and has
probably a gay future before it, for it has many charms for those who
like plenty of breezes and bathing-boxes. It must have been a lovely
spot when it was quiet, for its deep green dell ends in a fine cliff,
below which the sea ripples over a many-coloured foreshore. The Zetland
Hotel faces these things.
[Illustration: THE QUAY, STAITHES.]
From Saltburn we may drive across to Brotton, or may take the longer
way by Skelton, passing near the castle. This is now a house dating
obviously from the eighteenth century; but I believe there are among
its offices some slight remains of the castle of the Bruces--the castle
that was, long after their day, the scene of much revelry on the part
of its owner John Hall and his familiars. Among these was Laurence
Sterne. "Its festive board," says a Georgian writer, "was attended by
many of the literati of the age. Where genius and talent were blended
in so close union we cannot but imagine that the feast of reason
and the flow of soul were happily realised." According to authentic
accounts the feast and the flow--not of reason nor of soul--made the
place a perfect pandemonium.