THERE is always a thrill when a building you’ve passed on so many occasions that you take it for granted suddenly leaps out at you with a hidden history.
Halfpenny House is a farm at the foot of a Dales dip on the road between Richmond and Leyburn. We've driven and cycled past it so many times that we barely even notice its existence, but a book which Santa kindly brought us told us to take a proper look.
Halfpenny House, the inn on the right and the brewhouse on the left, looking towards the tank road that climbs up the dale towards Richmond
Halfpenny House is on a fast chicane where five roads converge, with cars whizzing down from the tank road – which is the Richmond to Askrigg turnpike road of 1751 – or accelerating round the moor to Catterick or taking the A6108 main road past the castellated farm of Walburn Hall to join the Richmond to Reeth turnpike of 1836.
Halfpenny House features in Time, Please! Lost Inns, Pubs and Alehouses of the Yorkshire Dales by David S Johnson, which was published by the North Craven Heritage Trust in 2019.
It says there are two theories about how the farm came by its name. One is that it cost half-a-penny to travel from here into Richmond on the turnpike; the other is that it cost a drover half-a-penny for overnight grazing here as he walked his animals into market.
Being on such a well used but isolated junction, there was obviously potential for the Halfpenny farmer to offer hospitality to travellers – but where, in such a location, would he get beer from?
If you pluck up courage to stop on the chicane – the cars really do whizz fast – the answer becomes clear because opposite the inn, on what appears to be just another farm outbuilding (above), are two carved stones: one says “brewhouse” and the other bears the date: “1832”.
The inscribed stones on the Halfpenny beerhouse
And, right on the roadside, with the stone wall of the brewhouse deliberately curved around it, is a spring from which the beer would have been made. Even above the roar of the engines, water still noisily gushes out and it looks wonderfully crystal clear (below)– even though bits of plastic wing mirror, which have tumbled off the rushing cars, are immersed in it.
READ MORE: WHY ARE SO MANY PUBS NAMED FOR WILLIAM IV, THE KING OF BEER DRINKERS?
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