West Riding of Yorkshire

“ The majority of the places mentioned in the northern or Barnsdale cycle will be found in the south of the West Riding of Yorkshire, a district bounded by the East Riding and Lincolnshire to the east, Derby and Nottingham shires to the south, and the river Calder to the north. ”

“ York, born 15 Nov. 1732; died 29 July, 1786; a justice of the peace for the West Riding of Yorkshire, &c; was educated for the law, and practised for a few years as an attorney, but on inheriting some family property he discontinued that profession. On several occasions he acted as marshal to his uncle Mr. Baron Perrott, when on circuit. He is said to have been a handsome man, and of an hospitable, convivial disposition. ”

“ The Red Horse is now almost extinct; it occurs as the sign of a house in Bond Street, in an advertisement about a spaniel lost by the Duke of Grafton. [234] By the term red was not meant vermilion; at that time it was the accepted word for what we now call roan. The Bay Horse is a great favourite in Yorkshire; in 1861 there were, in the West Riding alone, not less than seventy-seven inns, taverns, and public-houses, with such a sign, besides innumerable ale-houses. One would expect the Yorkshire Grey more indigenous to that county. ”

“ The literary quality of these almanacs varies greatly, but among their pages will be found many poems, and many prose tales and sketches, which vividly portray the West Riding artisan. Abundant justice is done to his sense of humour, which, if broad and at times even crude, is always good-natured and healthy, as well as to his intense love of the sentimental, which to the stranger lurks hidden beneath a mask of indifference. Incidentally, these almanacs also present a faithful picture of the social history of the West Riding during the greater part of a century. ”

“ The ordinary Yorkshire family dates back about two centuries, at which time it struggled out of some town to invest a little capital in land. The West Riding is very deficient in great houses built before the beginning of last century. Hardly a fragment is left of Howley, the old home of the Saviles; and Temple Newsam, the only Elizabethan palace in the West Riding, will soon become lost in the smoke that surrounds it. If Mr. Ruskin can save a single tree or stream, he will have done a great deal of good, and if he can purify and educate Wakefield, nothing need appear hopeless to him. ”

“ Exposed in olden times to the ravages of the fierce, long-haired Northmen, the East Riding of Yorkshire has never ceased to be a prey to a more insidious, irresistible, and fatal assailant, who has not only devastated, but actually carried off great portions of the land, with the ports, villages, churches, and churchyards thereunto belonging. ”

“ It would need the powers of an epic poet to invoke the muse to sing the rival claims of Leeds and Sheffield as headquarters of the West Riding, and the historian who is not a Yorkshireman must be content to set the fact on record that York was finally selected for reasons which seemed sufficient to the high contracting parties. ”

“ RIDINGS are the three districts into which from ancient times Yorkshire has been divided for administrative purposes. Formerly there were similar districts in Lindsey in Lincolnshire. The word riding was originally Written as thfithing or thriding, but the initial th has been absorbed in the final th or t of the words north, south, east and west, by which it was normally preceded. Ridings are Scandinavian institutions. ”

“ King Aethelstan and his men must have marched north by either the Watling Street or the Ermin Street. If the Norse fleet did come into the Humber, he must have come north by the Ermin Street, and his army could hardly have crossed the river under the circumstances. However much, therefore, we should like to assert that the greatest battle of olden times was fought in the East Riding of Yorkshire, it would be wiser not to do so, but to let our somewhat despised sister-county of Lincolnshire have the benefit of the doubt. ”

“ Two thousand years ago, what is now the East Riding of Yorkshire was chiefly forest land, with the exception of the Wold uplands, which were pastures, almost destitute of trees, having some semblance to the swelling and rolling waves of the ocean, where the Brigantes fed their flocks and herds, where they dwelt in scattered hamlets, and where they now sleep in their multitudinous tumuli. ”

“ It is the stern grandeur of the scarred hillsides and the wide mountainous views from the heights that give this part of Yorkshire such a fascination. If you climb to the top of Rogan's Seat, you have a huge panorama of desolate country spread out before you. The confused jumble of blue-grey mountains to the north-west is beyond the limits of Yorkshire at last, and in their strong embrace those stern Westmorland hills hold the charms of Lakeland.
If one stays in this mountainous region, there are new and exciting walks available for every day. ”

“ HOW THE EAST RIDING GOVERNS ITSELF. Every ten years a census is taken of the people inhabiting the British Isles. The latest counting of the people took place in 1911, when it was found that there were living in the East Riding of Yorkshire 432,804 persons. This large number of people is made up of men, women, and children who live in groups or communities very greatly varying in size. The number of persons living in the great city of Hull was 278,024; the number living in the little village of Wilsthorpe was only one.
Ancient Arms
of Beverley. ”

“ So William Stapleton had perforce to remain waiting in Hull.
Meanwhile Robert Aske was sending out letters to the men of the East Riding, and on Sunday, October 8th, the 194town bell at Beverley was set ringing and the townsmen ‘took oathe to the comons.’ Then
with greate noyse, showtes, and cryes they made proclamation everye man to appere at Westwood grene the morrowe after with suche horse and harnes as they had upon payne of death. ”

“ So I went about for awhile under a kind of suspicion, or as an unintentional martyr, until one day there met me two gentlemen from Leeds, one of whom declared that he and others, jealous of their county’s reputation, and doubting not to convict me of error, had made diligent inquiry and found to their discomfiture, that the assemblages implied in the villager’s remark, did actually take place within Yorkshire itself. The discovery is not one to be proud of ”

“ But to see so much of the country at once comes as a surprise to everyone. Stretching inland towards the backbone of England, there is spread out a huge tract of smiling country, covered with a most complex network of hedges, which gradually melt away into the indefinite blue edge of the world where the hills of Wensleydale rise from the plain. Looking across the little town of Guisborough, lying near the shelter of the hills, to the broad sweep of the North Sea, this piece of Yorkshire seems so small that one almost expects to see the Cheviots away in the north. ”

“ We are now in a corner of Westmoreland which, traversed by Birkdale, presents diversified alpine features. The valley is green; the meadows are flowery and dotted with cattle; the hills, stern and high, are browsed by sheep; and Maize Beck, a talkative mountain stream, flows with many a stony bend along the bottom—the dividing line between Westmoreland and Yorkshire. There are no trees; and for miles wide the only building is here and there a solitary byre. ”

“ But whether the inhabitants of the East Riding are living together in large communities or in small ones, they live at peace with one another; and any disorderly person who disturbs the peace of the community is quickly brought to book. Now, seeing that man is by nature somewhat inclined to be a quarrelsome animal, how is this very desirable state of affairs brought about?
The answer to this is that all the men, women, and children of the East Riding are living under certain wise laws by which their lives are governed. ”

“ Towards the north the descents are equally sudden, and the panorama of the Vale of Pickering, extending from the hills behind Scarborough to Helmsley far away in the west, is most remarkable. Down below lies the circumscribed plain, dead-level except for one or two isolated hillocks. The soil is dark and rich, and there is a marshy appearance everywhere, showing plainly the water-logged condition of the land even at the present day.
There is scarcely a district in England to compare with the Yorkshire Wolds for its remarkable richness in the remains of Early Man. ”

“ The flat land is laid out like a map below us; far away upon the horizon—which is level as the sea—rises "the huge tall steeple" of Howden; and between the plain of Yorkshire and the rising-ground of Lincolnshire are the sullen waters of that great river that has brought England so much of her prosperity. Not always, however, has the Humber brought prosperity. More than a thousand years ago the fleet of the avenging Danes, Hinguar and Hubba, swept up between these low banks, to lay this rich country waste. ”

“ Yorkshire (3,208) , the largest county in England, is divided into three Ridings (i. e. thirdings or thirds) for administrative purposes, North, East, and West, with a fourth called the Ainsty, under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and aldermen of York; of these the West is the wealthiest and the most populous; contains a large coal-field, and is the centre of the woollen manufacture of the county; the East being mainly agricultural, with iron-works and shipbuilding-works; and the North mainly pastoral, with industries connected with mining and shipping. ”

“ He granted a charter to the town, constituting it the capital of the East Riding, with many privileges and extraordinary rights; in consequence of which opulent merchants flocked to the town, and it soon began to flourish mightily, and became one of the wealthiest and most important of the trading towns of the realm. He also assigned the manor to the Archbishops of York, who built a palace there on the south of the church ”

“ There may be no streams, perhaps not even a pond; you may find few large trees, and scarcely any parks; ruined abbeys and even castles may be conspicuously absent, and yet the landscapes have a power of attracting and fascinating. This is exactly the case with the Wolds of Yorkshire, and their characteristics are not unlike the chalk hills of Sussex, or those great expanses of windswept downs, where the weathered monoliths of Stonehenge have resisted sun and storm for ages. ”

“ THE CLIFF, STAITHES.
[89]
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 ”

“ Again, just as Britain is split up into different counties, each of which makes for itself the by-laws which it considers best, so the East Riding is split up into different portions, each of which makes its own by-laws. ”

“ Bainbridge and Hawes; to cross the river at Yorebridge, and return by Askrigg and Redmire, making a short digression to Bolton Castle; then, turning to the left beyond Redmire, to strike across the "moorish lands" to Richmond. These Yorkshire moors, which seemed so "ill-looking" to Defoe, are neither black nor frightful in our later eyes, but glorious with colour and light. The old road from Leyburn across Barden and Hipswell Moors has rather a bad surface, and a hill that is stiff enough to account for the making of the new road ”

“ The castle, or fortified house of the Constables, is reduced to the insignificant ‘Danish Tower’ we have seen. It stands in a meadow, and sheep crop the grass which covers but does not hide the outline of the foundations. Yorkshire being a county rich in superstitions, it is not surprising to find that a fisherman will turn back from going to his boat, if he happens on his way to meet a parson, a woman, or a hare, as any one of these brings bad luck. It is also extremely unwise to mention to a man who is baiting lines a hare, a rabbit, a fox, a pig, or an egg. ”

“ A vast medley, truly! and all to be manufactured into broadcloth in Yorkshire. No wonder that the Univers declares England is to perish by her commerce.
The walk to the town gives you such a view as can only be seen in a manufacturing district: hills, fields, meadows, and rough slopes, all bestrewn with cottages, factories, warehouses, sheds, clouded here and there by smoke; roads and paths wandering apparently anywhere; here and there a quarry, and piles of squared stone; heaps of refuse; wheat-fields among the houses ”

“ Scattered over some of the pleasantest parts of Yorkshire are to be found the ruined homes of men and women who centuries ago formed a very distinct class among the people of our country. These men and women were the monks, friars, and nuns of mediæval England, and their homes were known as monasteries and friaries. ”

“ The distance between the towns is short, and soon after passing Starbeck we come to Harrogate’s extensive common known as the Stray. We follow the grassy space, when it takes a sharp turn to the north, and are soon in the centre of the great watering-place. Among the buildings that rise up in imposing masses on each side of us we can see no traces of anything that is not of recent date, and we find nothing at all to suggest that the place really belongs to Yorkshire. ”