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world’s orbit than the other; for the famous golf links with which Sandwich has again, in widely different fashion, made its name familiar throughout England, affect the old town itself but little. A walk now runs along the old walls within which the beautiful Norman tower of St. Clement’s Church rises above the low roofs. Open spaces and gardens lie easily about in the little town which, as an unchanged survival from Tudor or Mediæval times, has no equal in England. Before the Norman Conquest it was the chief port of the nation. As late as 1446 its harbour, now dry land, is described by a German ambassador as “wonderful, the resort of ships of all sizes from all parts of Europe.”

By the water-gate at the entrance to the old bridge over the Stour is the Barbican. But the behaviour of the Stour as it draws towards the sea under present conditions is the most remarkable; for when within half a mile of the south end of Pegwell Bay opposite Ramsgate it bends suddenly southward, runs for 3 or 4 miles parallel with the east coast to Sandwich, and then doubles back upon the same course to meet the sea at the spot where its original intention of ending its career seems obviously to have been. Close to its mouth upon the other side is the shingle spit of Ebbsfleet, where not merely St. Augustine, but more than a century earlier Hengist and Horsa, first planted their pagan feet upon British soil.

On the very banks of the river are the long embankments still strewn with tiles and pottery, marking the site of the Roman Rutupium, a station of sufficient importance to be the headquarters of the Second Legion in the third century, or, in other words, of a garrison of about 8000 men. And in scarcely any part of England has such a mass of coins been recovered, while on the rising ground the graves of the early Saxon settlers and invaders lie thick amid the chalk. But the mouth of the Stour, where the action of the sea alone during the long centuries since Roman times affords in itself a fascinating subject, is so rich besides in human memories that I should be in danger of slipping too deeply into the maritime aspect of English rivers, which I have described as having no immediate concern with the nature of this book. Still, it must be admitted, though less with the Kentish than the Sussex rivers, that their real interests and their physical attractions only begin with the first breath of the sea.

CHAPTER VIII
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

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,

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

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 2½ 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,

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.

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

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.