Gordon Home

“ We can hear the chink of glasses and the rattle of pewter tankards in the cosy parlours of the "White Swan," the "George," and the rest; we can hear as the years go by the loud cheers raised for Marlborough, for Wolfe, for Nelson, or for Wellington, while overhead the church bells are ringing loudly in the old grey tower. These were the days of the highwaymen, and even as late as 1830 a postman was robbed near the moorland village of Lockton, on his way to Whitby. ”

“ The little church of Kirkdale, remarkable for its Saxon sun-dial and other pre-Norman remains, is surrounded by masses of foliage, and the walk up the dale from this point to the romantically situated Cauldron Mill is one of remarkable beauty. As one follows the course of the beck higher and higher towards it source north of Bransdale, the densely wooded sides become bare, and wide expanses and the invigorating moorland air are exchanged for the rich land scents and the limited views. ”

“ Superstitions still linger among the moorland folk, and the custom of placing a plate of salt upon the breast of one who is dying is still continued here and there in a covert fashion. Clocks are still stopped, fires raked out, and looking-glasses turned to the wall at the moment of death, but such acts of deference to the world of fancy are naturally only seen by those who have intimate experience of the cottage life of these parts, and the casual visitor sees no traces of them. ”

“ Levisham and Lockton, the twin villages that stand upon the very edge of the heather, are separated by a tremendous valley, and although from above they may seem so close as to be almost continuous, in reality they are as remote from one another as though they were separated by five or six miles. To reach Levisham from Lockton means a break-neck descent of a very dangerous character and a climb up from the mill and lonely church at the bottom of the valley that makes one marvel how the village ever came to be perched in a position of such inaccessibility. ”

“ CHAPTER III The Vale of Pickering in the Lesser Ice Age
Long before even the earliest players took up their parts in the great Drama of Human Life which has been progressing for so long in this portion of England, great changes came about in the aspect of the stage. These transformations date from the period of Arctic cold, which caused ice of enormous thickness to form over the whole of north-western Europe.
Throughout this momentous age in the history of Yorkshire, as far as we can tell, the flaming sunsets that dyed the ice and snow with crimson were reflected in no human eyes. ”

“ In those far-off times, when the sun was younger and his majesty more imposing than at the present day, we may imagine a herd of reindeer or a solitary bear standing upon some ice-covered height and staring wonderingly at the blood-red globe as it neared the horizon. The tremendous silence that brooded over the face of the land was seldom broken save by the roar of the torrents, the reverberating boom of splitting ice, or the whistling and shrieking of the wind. ”

“ Brompton has already been mentioned in connection with Wordsworth's wedding. The view over the bright green pastures of the Vale when seen from the church porch is of conspicuous beauty, and the ponds that are numerous in the village help to make picturesque views from many points. The Hall is a large building possessing a ponderous bulk but little charm, and it is only by the kindly aid of the plentiful trees and an extensive growth of ivy that the squire's house does not destroy the rural sweetness of the village. ”

“ There was nothing sudden or romantic therefore in the marriage which took place at Brompton in 1802. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy went down from London to the pretty Yorkshire village in September, and stayed at the little farmhouse, whose parlour windows looked across the Vale of Pickering to the steep wolds on the southern side. The house, as far as I can discover, has not been altered in the century which has elapsed, and the cosy ingle-nook in the room on the right of the entrance remains full of memories of the poet and his betrothed--his "perfect woman, nobly planned." ”

“ Roman chariots, squads of foot soldiers, and mounted men would have been a common sight on the road, and to the sullen natives the bronze eagle would gradually have become as familiar as their own totem-posts. Gradually we know that the British chiefs and their sons and daughters became demoralised by the sensual pleasures of the new civilisation and thus the invaders secured themselves in their new possessions in a far more efficacious manner than by force of arms. ”

“ One can wander, too, on the moors a few miles to the north and see heather stretching away to the most distant horizon and feel that there, also, are scenes which have been identically the same for many centuries. The men of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages may have swept their eyes over landscapes so similar that they would find the moorlands quite as they knew them, although they would miss the dense forests of the valleys and the lower levels. ”

“ We see therefore that in this remote age Britain enjoyed a climate which encouraged the existence of animals now to be found only in tropical regions, that herds of mammoths or straight-tusked elephants smashed their way through primæval forests and that the hippopotamus and the woolly or small-nosed rhinoceros frequented the moist country at the margin of the lake. Packs of wolves howled at night and terrorised their prey, and in winter other animals from northern parts would come as far south as Yorkshire. ”

“ The old shambles still stand in the shadow of the Tolbooth, the somewhat gaunt but not altogether unpleasing building that occupies a central position in the village. Adjoining the shambles is the broken stump of the market-cross raised upon its old steps, and close by also is the entrance to the churchyard. The church occupies a picturesque position, and contains, besides the Elizabethan brass to Lady Brooke, a parvise chamber over the old porch. ”

“ In that distant period of the history of the human race when man was still so primitive in his habits that traces of his handiwork are exceedingly difficult to discover, the forest and Vale of Pickering seem to have been without human inhabitants. Remains of this Old Stone Age have been found in many parts of England, but they are all south of a line drawn from Lincoln to Derbyshire and North Wales. In the caves at Cresswell Craggs in Derbyshire notable Palæolithic discoveries were made, but for some reason these savage hordes seem to have come no further north than that spot. ”

“ Sometimes in the evening, too, a pleasing impression may be obtained when the church bells of the villages are ringing for evening service. At the top of Wrelton Cliff, the sound of several peals of bells in the neighbouring villages floats upwards across the broad pastures, and it seems almost as though the whole plain beneath one's feet were joining in the evening song. ”

“ The cottages in the villages are, many of them, of great age, and most of them have been the silent witnesses of innumerable superstitious rites and customs. When one thoroughly realises the degrading character of the beliefs that so powerfully swayed the lives of the villagers and moorland-folk of this district, as late as the first twenty years of the nineteenth century, one can only rejoice that influences arose sufficiently powerful to destroy them. ”

“ One of the staple industries of Pickering and the adjoining villages at this time was weaving, and a great number of the cottages had the room on the opposite side of the passage to the parlour fitted up with a loom.
We have now seen many aspects of the daily life in and near Pickering during the Georgian period. We know something of sports and amusements of the people, of their religious beliefs, their work, their customs at marriages and deaths, and we also have some idea of the dreadful beings that these country folk trembled at during the hours of darkness. ”

“ The quaint little church of Ellerburne and the few antique cottages that make up the hamlet lie about a mile from Thornton up the steep valley to the north. The hills on either side are crowned with plantations, but farther up the dale appear the bare slopes of the edge of the moors. Allerston lies at right angles to the main road. It is full of quaint stone cottages, and is ornamented by the square tower of the church and the cheerful brook that flows along the road side. The church at Ebberston stands aloof from the village at the edge of the small park belonging to the Hall. ”

“ The Angles occupied most of northern England, including the kingdom of Northumbria, of which Yorkshire formed a large part. These fierce Anglo-Saxon people, with an intermixing of Danish blood, a few centuries later were the ancestors of a great part of the present population of the county. Sidonius Apollinaris, a Bishop of Gaul, who wrote in the fifth century, says, "We have not a more cruel and more dangerous enemy than the Saxons: they overcome all who have the courage to oppose them; they surprise all who are so imprudent as not to be prepared for their attack. ”

“ Before the construction of the railway connecting Pickering and Helmsley, this part of Yorkshire was seldom visited by any one but those having business in the immediate neighbourhood; and even now as one walks along the wide main street one cannot help feeling that the village is still far removed from the influences of modern civilisation. ”

“ The Costa Beck, a stream flowing from the huge spring at Keld Head, on the west side of Pickering, was being cleaned out for drainage purposes at a spot a little over two miles from the town, when several pieces of rude pottery were thrown on to the bank. These excited Mr Mitchelson's interest and at another occasion his examination revealed more pottery and mixed up with the fragments were the bones of animals. Some piles forming two parallel rows about 4 feet apart were also discovered crossing the stream at right angles to its course. ”

“ The famous breed of horses known as the Cleveland Bays come from this district of Yorkshire. They are bred all over the district between Pickering, Helmsley, Scarborough, and Middlesborough, and although efforts have been made to raise them in other parts of England and abroad, it has been found that they lose the hardness of bone which is such a characteristic feature of the Cleveland bred animals. The Cleveland bay coach horse is descended from the famous Darly Arabian, and preserves in a wonderful manner the thoroughbred outline. ”

“ The introduction of metal into Britain was due to the successive waves of Celtic Aryans who by means of their bronze weapons were able to overcome the Neolithic people. The Brythons or Britons, one of these Celtic peoples, seem to have succeeded in occupying the whole of England. They buried their dead in the round barrows which are to be found in most parts of the country but are particularly numerous on the hills immediately surrounding Pickering and on the wolds to the south of the Vale. ”

“ The interior of the church is a melancholy spectacle of churchwarden methods, but probably Lockton will before many years receive that careful restoration that has taken place at Ellerburne and Sinnington. The font is one of those unadorned, circular basins which generally date from the thirteenth century. One of the village inns is known as "The Durham Ox," and bears a sign adorned with a huge beast whose pensive but intelligent eye looks down upon all passers-by. ”

“ The boulder clay at the seaward end of the Vale seems to have been capped by ice of a thickness of nearly 100 feet which efficiently contained the waters of the lake until they overflowed through a depression among the hills to the south of Malton. If the waters escaped by any other outlet to the west near Gilling and Coxwold, it can scarcely have been more than a temporary affair compared to the overflow that produced the gorge at Kirkham Abbey, as the Gilling Gap was itself closed by the great glacier descending the Vale of York. ”

“ Not only are there innumerable barrows or burial mounds constructed by this early race on the hills above the Vale, but on Beacon Hill, the slight eminence just to the west of Pickering Castle, at Cawthorne and also at Cropton, there are evidences of what may be their fortifications, while the plough is continually bringing to light more relics of the period. ”