THE DERWENT AND THE HOWARDIAN HILLS
Malton is the only town on the Derwent, and it is made up of three
separate places--Old Malton, a picturesque village; New Malton, a
pleasant and old-fashioned town; and Norton, a curiously extensive
suburb. The last has a Norman font in its modern church, and there its
attractions begin and end. New Malton has a fortunate position on a
slope well above the lush grass by the river, and in this way arranges
the backs of its houses with unconscious charm. The two churches,
although both containing Norman pillars and arches, have been so
extensively rebuilt that their antiquarian interest is slight. Nothing
remains of the castle mentioned by Leland, and even Lord Eure’s great
house which succeeded it was taken down before the end of the
seventeenth century, before the building had had time to lose its
newness. On the way to Old Malton, some huge gateways on the right are
survivals of the imposing house.
On account of its undoubted signs of Roman occupation in the form of two
rectangular camps, and its situation at the meeting-place of some three
or four Roman roads, New Malton has been made one of the competitors for
the honour of having been the _Derventio_ of the Antonine Itinerary. It
is, however, far more probable that Stamford Bridge, further down the
Derwent, bore that name.
Old Malton is a cheerful and well-kept village, with antique cottages
here and there, roofed with mossy thatch. It makes a pretty picture as
you come along the level road from Pickering, with a group of trees on
the left and the tower of the Priory Church appearing sedately above the
humble roofs. A Gilbertine monastery was founded here about the middle
of the twelfth century, during the lifetime of St. Gilbert of
Sempringham in Lincolnshire, who during the last year of his long life
sent a letter to the Canons of Malton, addressing them affectionately as
‘My dear sons.’ His death took place at Sempringham when he was over a
hundred years old, and his burial in the priory church there was
witnessed by a great multitude, as well as the grief-stricken priors
and abbots of his own and other orders. Very little remains of Malton
Priory with the exception of the church, built at the very beginning of
the Early English period. Of the two western towers, the southern one
only survives, and both aisles, two bays of the nave, and everything
else to the east has gone. The abbreviated nave now serves as a parish
church.
Between Malton and the Vale of York there lies that stretch of hilly
country we saw from the edge of the Wolds, for some time past known as
the Howardian Hills, from Castle Howard which stands in their midst. The
many interests that this singularly remote neighbourhood contains can be
realized by making such a peregrination as we made through the Wolds.
There is no need to avoid the main road south of Malton. It has a
park-like appearance, with its large trees and well-kept grass on each
side, and the glimpses of the wooded valley of the Derwent on the left
are most beautiful. On the right we look across the nearer grass-lands
into the great park of Castle Howard, and catch glimpses between the
distant masses of trees of Lord Carlisle’s stately home. The old castle
of the Howards having been burnt down, Vanburgh, the greatest architect
of early Georgian times, designed the enormous buildings now standing.
In 1772 Horace Walpole compressed the glories of the place into a few
sentences. ’... I can say with exact truth,’ he writes to George
Selwyn, ‘that I never was so agreeably astonished in my days as with the
first vision of the whole place. I had heard of Vanburgh, and how Sir
Thomas Robinson and he stood spitting and swearing at one another; nay,
I had heard of glorious woods, and Lord Strafford alone had told me that
I should see one of the finest places in Yorkshire; but nobody ... had
informed me that I should at one view see a palace, a town, a fortified
city, temples on high places, woods worthy of being each a metropolis of
the Druids, vales connected to hills by other woods, the noblest lawn in
the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt
one to be buried alive; in short, I have seen gigantic places before,
but never a sublime one.’
The style is that of the Corinthian renaissance, and Walpole’s
description applies as much to-day as when he wrote. The pictures
include some of the masterpieces of Reynolds, Lely, Vandyck, Rubens,
Tintoretto, Canaletto, Giovanni Bellini, Domenichino and Annibale
Caracci.
[Illustration: KIRKHAM ABBEY
The gateway is the chief relic of this once beautiful Cistercian abbey.
On the right and through the archway the Derwent can be seen flowing
beneath hanging woods.]
Two or three miles to the south, the road finds itself close to the deep
valley of the Derwent. A short turning, embowered with tall trees whose
dense foliage only allows a soft green light to filter through, goes
steeply down to the river. The railway, although traversed by thundering
express trains bound for York or the coast, is so hidden that it
scarcely interferes with the beautiful spot where stand the ruins of
Kirkham Abbey. We cross the deep and placid river by a stone bridge, and
come to the Priory gateway. It is a stately ruin partially mantled with
ivy, and it preserves in a most remarkable fashion the detail of its
outward face. Ten shields bear the devices of Clare, Plantagenet, Ros,
Greystoke, and Vaux, with others of some uncertainty, possibly including
Espec, the founder of the Abbey. Through the wide pointed arch there is
a glimpse of a sloping meadow backed by tall trees and the steeply
rising ground just beyond the river. It appears in the picture of the
gateway reproduced in these pages.
The mossy steps of the cross just outside the gateway are, according to
a tradition in one of the Cottonian manuscripts, associated with the
event which led to the founding of the Abbey by Walter Espec, lord of
Helmsley. He had, we are told, an only son, also named Walter, who was
fond of riding with exceeding swiftness.[D]
One day when galloping at a great pace his horse stumbled near a small
stone, and young Espec was brought violently to the ground, breaking his
neck and leaving his father childless. The grief-stricken parent is said
to have found consolation in the founding of three abbeys, one of them
being at Kirkham, where the fatal accident took place. The stone the
unfortunate boy struck in falling is, according to the legend,
incorporated in the base of the cross. Unfortunately, this picturesque
story lacks any confirmation from other sources, and all that is
definitely known is that Walter Espec founded the priory for Austin
canons early in the twelfth century.
Of the church and conventual buildings only a few fragments remain to
tell us that this secluded spot by the Derwent must have possessed one
of the most stately monasteries in Yorkshire. One tall lancet is all
that has been left of the church; and of the other buildings a few
walls, a beautiful Decorated lavatory, and a Norman doorway alone
survive.
Stamford Bridge, which is reached by no direct
[Illustration: STAMFORD BRIDGE
The river is the Derwent, and the bridge is not ancient. In the battle
fought here in 1066 between Harold and the Norwegians, the wooden bridge
which figured so conspicuously in the early part of the fight crossed
the river close to the point from which this picture was made.]
road from Kirkham Abbey, is so historically fascinating that we must
leave the hills for a time to see the site of that momentous battle
between Harold, the English King, and the Norwegian army, under Harold
Hardrada and Harold’s brother Tostig. The English host made their sudden
attack from the right bank of the river, and the Northmen on that side,
being partially armed, were driven back across a narrow wooden bridge.
One Northman, it appears, played the part of Horatius in keeping the
English at bay for a time. When he fell, the Norwegians had formed up
their shield-wall on the left bank of the river, no doubt on the rising
ground just above the village. That the final and decisive phase of the
battle took place there Freeman has no doubt. The Saga of Snorro the
Norwegian is full of detail in regard to the fight, which, however
fascinating, must be considered to a very great extent mythical. Yet
there are English chronicles giving certain broad facts, and with these
Freeman allows us to picture something of the last victory of the
English:
‘We may see how, step by step, inch by inch, dealing blow for blow
even in falling back, Northman and Scot and Fleming give way before
the irresistible charge of the renowned Thingmen. We may see the
golden dragon, the ensign of Cuthred and Ælfred, glitter on high
over this its latest field of triumph. We may hear the shouts of
“Holy Rood” and “God Almighty” sound for the last time as an
English host pressed on to victory. We may see two kingly forms
towering high over either host.... We may see the banished
Englishman [Tostig] defiant to the last, striking the last blow
against the land which had reared him, and the brother who had
striven to save him from his doom.... There Harold of Norway, the
last of the ancient sea-kings, yielded up that fiery soul which had
braved death in so many forms and in so many lands.’
The bridge of to-day is shown in the accompanying illustration, the site
of its early predecessor being in the foreground of the picture, a fact
plainly demonstrated by the roads on each side of the river pointing to
this spot. There is a fair-sized village of low red-brick houses looking
on to a green, with one side open to the river, and a water-mill, built
on a natural rock foundation, rises to a great height by the weir. A
sundial over the doorway is dated 1764, which is probably the year when
the present mill was put up.
Stamford Bridge being, as already mentioned, the most probable site of
the Roman _Derventio_, it was natural that some village should have
grown up at such an important crossing of the river.
An unfrequented road through a belt of picturesque woodland goes from
Stamford Bridge past Sand Hutton to the highway from York to Malton. If
we take the branch-road to Flaxton, we soon see, over the distant trees,
the lofty towers of Sheriff Hutton Castle, and before long reach a
silent village standing near the imposing ruins. The great rectangular
space, enclosed by huge corner-towers and half-destroyed curtain walls,
is now utilized as the stackyard of a farm, and the effect as we
approach by a footpath is most remarkable. It seems scarcely possible
that this is the castle Leland described with so much enthusiasm. ‘I saw
no House in the North so like a Princely Logginges,’ he says, and also
describes ‘the stately Staire up to the Haul’ as being very magnificent;
‘and so,’ he continues, ‘is the Haul it self, and al the residew of the
House.’ At the south-western angle is a tower in a fair state of
preservation, whose lowest story is now used for cattle, the floor being
deep in straw, and elsewhere farming implements are stored under the
shattered walls that threaten to fall at any time.
We come to the north-west tower, and look beyond its ragged outline to
the distant country lying to the west, grass and arable land with trees
appearing to grow so closely together at a short distance, that we have
no difficulty in realizing that this was the ancient Forest of Galtres,
which reached from Sheriff Hutton and Easingwold to the very gates of
York. The greater part of the forest, however, was, in Leland’s time,
only low meadows and ‘morish ground ful of Carres,’ while in other
places it was ‘reasonably woddid.’ Galtres remained a royal forest until
1670, when an Act was passed for its enclosure.
In the complete loneliness of the ruins, with the silence only
intensified by the sounds of fluttering wings in the tops of the towers,
we in imagination sweep away the haystacks and reinstate the former
grandeur of the fortress in the days of Ralph Neville, first Earl of
Westmorland. It was he who rebuilt the Norman castle of Bertram de
Bulmer, Sheriff of Yorkshire, on a grander scale. Upon the death of
Warwick, the Kingmaker, in 1471, Edward IV. gave the castle and manor of
Sheriff Hutton to his brother Richard, afterwards Richard III., and it
was he who kept Edward IV.’s eldest child Elizabeth a prisoner within
these massive walls. The unfortunate Edward, Earl of Warwick, the eldest
son of George, Duke of Clarence, when only eight years old, was also
incarcerated here for about three years. Richard III., the usurper, when
he lost his only son, had thought of making this boy his heir, but the
unfortunate
[Illustration: SHERIFF HUTTON CASTLE
Belonged to Warwick the Kingmaker, and the arms of the Nevilles still
appear on one of the ruined towers. Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Queen
of Henry VII., was imprisoned here for a time, and also her cousin, the
unfortunate Earl of Warwick, eldest son of the Duke of Clarence, who
passed all except the first years of his childhood in confinement.]
child was passed over in favour of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, and
remained in close confinement at Sheriff Hutton until August, 1485, when
the Battle of Bosworth placed Henry VII. on the throne. Sir Robert
Willoughby soon afterwards arrived at the castle, and took the little
Earl to London. Princess Elizabeth was also sent for at the same time,
but whether both the Royal prisoners travelled together does not appear
to be recorded. The terrible pathos of this simultaneous removal from
the castle lay in the fact that Edward was to play the part of Pharaoh’s
chief baker, and Elizabeth that of the chief butler; for, after fourteen
years in the Tower of London, the Earl of Warwick was beheaded, while
the King, after five months, raised up Elizabeth to be his Queen. Even
in those callous times the fate of the Prince was considered cruel, for
it was pointed out after his execution that, as he had been kept in
imprisonment since he was eight years old, and had no knowledge or
experience of the world, he could hardly have been accused of any
malicious purpose. So cut off from all the common sights of everyday
life was the miserable boy that it was said ‘that he could not discern a
goose from a capon.’
On a commanding position raised above the Forest of Galtres, and having
a most memorable view over the whole vale of York, stand the castle and
village of Crayke. Until 1844 Crayke was a detached fragment of the
county of Durham, and the castle was to a great extent rebuilt in the
fifteenth century by Robert Neville, Bishop of Durham. The Parliament
ordered the castle to be made indefensible in 1646, and it is now
partially restored as a private house. About four miles to the north we
reach the beautiful neighbourhood of Coxwold and Newburgh Priory. The
roads near the park are bordered by wide and beautifully kept turf, and,
with afternoon sunlight throwing long shadows from the trees and turning
the grass into a golden green, there could scarcely be found any more
attractive approaches for a village and its park.
Some portions of the Augustinian Priory are built into one extremity of
the house, and these include the walls of the kitchen and some curious
carvings showing on the exterior. William of Newburgh, the historian,
whose writings end abruptly in 1198--probably the year of his death--was
a canon of the Priory, and spent practically his whole life there. In
his preface he denounces the inaccuracies and fictions of the writings
of Geoffrey of Monmouth. At the Dissolution Newburgh was given by Henry
VIII. to Anthony Belasyse, the punning motto of whose family was _Bonne
et belle assez_. One of his descendants was created Lord Fauconberg by
Charles I., and the peerage became extinct in 1815, on the death of the
seventh to bear the title. The present owner--Sir George Wombwell,
Bart.--inherited the property from his grandmother, who was a daughter
of the last Lord Fauconberg. Sir George is one of the three surviving
officers who took part in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava
on October 25, 1854. His account of that famous deed, written in the
diary which he kept during the eleven months he was in the Crimea, is of
thrilling interest. I am able to give some extracts which describe his
temporary capture by the Russians:
‘Both brigades of cavalry then advanced, and an order in writing
came down from Lord Raglan telling us to attack some guns, which
were firing on us.... We broke into a gallop, every man feeling
convinced that the quicker we rode through the awful shower of
grape-shot, musketry, and shells which they poured into our flanks
as we passed, the better chance we should have of escaping unhurt.
‘We charged up to the guns, which kept firing at us till we got up
to them, and cut the Russian gunners down as they stood at their
guns. The way the showers of grape and cannister, musketry, and
shells came among us was something too awful to describe; the men
were falling in heaps all round me, and every time I looked up I
could see our line getting thinner and thinner, till, by the time
we passed the guns and got up to the third line of Russian cavalry,
we were but a mere handful.... My horse was shot under me, in what
place I know not, but down he came. I luckily soon caught a trooper
which had lost its rider, and got on his back and joined the second
line, but in coming back he got quite knocked up and refused to
move.
‘I at last got him into a slow walk, and was congratulating myself
on having passed unseen two squadrons of Russian Lancers, when
suddenly a horrid yell arose and I was surrounded by a lot of them,
brandishing their swords and lances, and desiring me to throw down
my sword, which, seeing resistance was useless, I did. They then
seized my pistols in my holsters, and helped me in a very rough way
off my wounded trooper, and marched me off a prisoner on foot
between two of them, with three more behind.
‘I, of course, walked quietly with them, but seeing the 11th
Hussars coming back at a gallop, when they got near I made a rush
forward and luckily caught another trooper, on which I jumped and
joined the 11th, and rode back with them.... The first person I met
was the Duke of Cambridge, who, seeing me coming into camp, rode up
and said, “Well done, young Wombwell.”’
The late Duke of Cambridge paid several visits to Newburgh, occupying
what is generally called ‘the Duke’s Room.’ Rear-Admiral Lord Adolphus
FitzClarence, whose father was George IV., died in 1856 in the bed still
kept in this room. In a glass case, at the end of a long gallery
crowded with interest, are kept the uniform and accoutrements Sir
George wore at Balaclava; the missing sword and pistols bringing home
vividly the reality of the incident just described.
The second Lord Fauconberg, who was raised from Viscount to the rank of
Earl in 1689, was warmly attached to the Parliamentary side in the Civil
War, and took as his second wife Cromwell’s third daughter, Mary. This
close connexion with the Protector explains the inscription upon a vault
immediately over one of the entrances to the Priory. On a small metal
plate is written:
‘In this vault are Cromwell’s bones, brought here, it is believed,
by his daughter Mary, Countess of Fauconberg, at the Restoration,
when his remains were disinterred from Westminster Abbey.’
The letters ‘R. I. P.’ below are only just visible, an attempt having
been made to erase them. No one seems to have succeeded in finally
clearing up the mystery of the last resting-place of Cromwell’s remains.
The body was exhumed from its tomb in Henry VII.’s Chapel at
Westminster, and hung on the gallows at Tyburn on January 30, 1661--the
twelfth anniversary of the execution of Charles I.--and the head was
placed upon a pole raised above St. Stephen’s Hall, and had a separate
history, which is known. Lord Fauconberg is said to have become a
Royalist at the Restoration, and if this were true, he would perhaps
have been able to secure the decapitated remains of his father-in-law,
after their burial at the foot of the gallows at Tyburn. It has often
been stated that a sword, bridle, and other articles belonging to
Cromwell are preserved at Newburgh Priory, but this has been
conclusively shown to be a mistake, the objects having been traced to
one of the Belasyses.
Coxwold has that air of neatness and well-preserved antiquity which is
so often to be found in England where the ancient owners of the land
still spend a large proportion of their time in the great house of the
village. There is a very wide street, with picturesque old houses on
each side, which rises gently towards the church. A great tree with
twisted branches--whether oak or elm, I cannot remember--stands at the
top of the street opposite the churchyard, and adds much charm to the
village. The inn has recently lost its thatch, but is still a quaint
little house with the typical Yorkshire gable, finished with a stone
ball. On the great sign fixed to the wall are the arms and motto of the
Fauconbergs, and the interior is full
[Illustration: COXWOLD
Laurence Sterne was incumbent here for some years. The pulpit from which
he preached can still be seen in the church, and his house is on the
right-hand side, a little way out of the picture, beyond the elm.]
of old-fashioned comfort and cleanliness. Nearly opposite stand the
almshouses, dated 1662.
The church is chiefly Perpendicular, with a rather unusual octagonal
tower. In the eighteenth century the chancel was rebuilt, but the
Fauconberg monuments in it were replaced. Sir William Belasyse, who
received the Newburgh property from his uncle, the first owner, died in
1603, and his fine Jacobean tomb, painted in red, black and gold, shows
him with a beard and ruff. His portrait hangs in one of the
drawing-rooms of the Priory. The later monuments, adorned with great
carved figures, are all interesting. They encroach so much on the space
in the narrow chancel that a most curious method for lengthening the
communion-rail has been resorted to--that of bringing forward from the
centre a long narrow space enclosed within the rails. From the pulpit
Laurence Sterne preached when he was incumbent here for the last eight
years of his life. He came to Coxwold in 1760, and took up his abode in
the charming old house he quaintly called ‘Shandy Hall.’ It is on the
opposite side of the road to the church, and has a stone roof and one of
those enormous chimneys so often to be found in the older farmsteads of
the north of England. Sterne’s study was the very small room on the
right-hand side of the entrance doorway; it now contains nothing
associated with him, and there is more pleasure in viewing the outside
of the house than is gained by obtaining permission to enter.
During his last year at Coxwold, when his rollicking, boisterous spirits
were much subdued, Sterne completed his ‘Sentimental Journey.’ He also
relished more than before the country delights of the village,
describing it in one of his letters as ‘a land of plenty.’ Every day he
drove out in his chaise, drawn by two long-tailed horses, until one day
his postilion met with an accident from one of his master’s pistols,
which went off in his hand. ‘He instantly fell on his knees,’ wrote
Sterne, ‘and said “Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy
name”--at which, like a good Christian, he stopped, not remembering any
more of it. The affair was not so bad as he had at first thought, for it
has only bursten two of his fingers (he says).’ In a letter to his
daughter Lydia, who was in Paris acquiring a little French vanity, he
writes: ‘My pleasures are few in compass. My poor cat sits purring
beside me. Your lively French dog shall have his place on the other side
of my fire; but if he is as devilish as when I first saw him, I must
tutor him, for _I will not have my cat abused_. In short, I will have
nothing devilish about me.’
The beautiful Hambleton Hills begin to rise up steeply about two miles
north of Coxwold, and there we come upon the ruins of Byland Abbey.
Their chief feature is the west end of the church, with its one turret
pointing a finger to the heavens, and the lower portion of a huge
circular window, without any sign of tracery. This fine example of Early
English work is illustrated here. The whole building appears to be the
original structure built soon after 1177, for it shows everywhere the
transition from Norman to Early English which was taking place at the
close of the twelfth century. The founders were twelve monks and an
abbot, named Gerald, who left Furness Abbey in 1134, and after some
vicissitudes came to the notice of Gundreda, the mother of Roger de
Mowbray, either by recommendation or by accident. One account pictures
the holy men on their way to Archbishop Thurstan at York, with all their
belongings in one wagon drawn by eight oxen, and describes how they
chanced to meet Gundreda’s steward as they journeyed near Thirsk.
Through Gundreda the monks went to Hode, and after four years received
land at Old Byland, where they wished to build an abbey. This position
was found to be too close to Rievaulx, whose bells could be too plainly
heard, so that five years later the restless community obtained a fresh
grant of land from De Mowbray, at a place called Stocking, where they
remained until they came to Byland.
Great heaps of fallen masonry, grown over with grass, now fill the nave
and transepts, and it is quite possible that a much better idea of the
church could be obtained if a thorough examination were made. There are
no restrictions to the promiscuous curio-hunters, who smash pieces of
moulding off the bases of exposed columns, to take away as mementoes to
be kept for a season and then thrown away. Almost any of the roads to
the east go through surprisingly attractive scenery. There are heathery
commons, roads embowered with great spreading trees, or running along
open hill-sides, and frequently lovely views of the Hambletons and more
distant moors in the north.
In scenery of this character stands Gilling Castle, the seat of the
Fairfaxes for some three centuries. It possesses one of the most
beautiful Elizabethan dining rooms to be found in this country. The
walls are panelled to a considerable height, the remaining space being
filled with paintings of
[Illustration: BYLAND ABBEY
The west end of the ruined church is shown in the picture. It is Early
English, while most of the structure is Transitional Norman. Byland was
a Cistercian abbey.]
decorative trees, one for each wapentake of Yorkshire. Each tree is
covered with the coats of arms of the great families of that time in the
wapentake. The brilliant colours against the dark green of the trees
form a most suitable relief to the uniform brown of the panelling. In
addition to the charm of the room itself, the view from the windows into
a deep hollow clothed with dense foliage, with a distant glimpse of
country beyond, is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere.
Stonegrave church is notable for its pre-Norman crosses, and
incorporated in the walls of Barton-le-Street’s modern church is a
marvellously fine collection of Norman carved stones from the former
building. The most notable are in the shelter of the north porch, and
are thus preserved from the weather.
Before reaching Barton-le-Street on our way back to Malton, after
completing this large circle of exploration, we pass through the pretty
village of Slingsby, where the ruins of its castle show their ivy-clad
outline. Although the site is probably ancient, the existing walls are
not earlier than the seventeenth century. It is, in fact, stated that
this house--for it is scarcely a castle--was building at the time of the
Civil War, and was never completed or even occupied at any time.
A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY OF YORK