Chris Lloyd leafs through a new book called Secret Richmond & Swaledale, by Andrew Graham Stables, and lets ten secrets out the bag

Fake views

ONE of the most wonderful views from the B6270 which winds along the Swale valley bottom is of Ellerton Priory, with a couple of cedars growing through the nave of a ruined church. This priory was founded in 1200 and was the smallest and poorest in Yorkshire.

The last of its white-clad nuns was Joan Harkey who handed it over for dissolution in 1537 and received a £3 pension – she died in poverty in Richmond.

The Erle-Drax family built the nearby house in 1830 and modified what was left of the priory so that the 13th Century tower became an idealised romantic ruin that is still grabbing the traveller’s attention.

Gilling

IN the 650s AD, a monastery was established at Ingethlingum – now called Gilling West – and Trumhere was the first abbot. It was probably destroyed by Viking raiders in the 9th Century, although the church of St Agatha is probably on its site.

Then the village – by now called Ghellinges – became the chief seat of Edwin, the Saxon Earl of Mercia. This is probably why just above Gilling there’s a place called Castle Hill.

However, after the Norman invasion, Earl Edwin’s land was given Lord Alan Rufus who decided to build his castle in Richmond.

Famous last words

ON January 29, 1820, King George III uttered: “Oh! For a breath of Gatherley air.” Then he died. He was referring to the moor to the north of Richmond which the A66 crosses – the king would have known it from his journeys into Scotland. When he died George was, of course, mad.

Heights of folly

WHEN Sir Lawrence Dundas bought Aske Hall, between Richmond and Gilling, in 1763, he employed Lancelot “Capability” Brown to recreate the landscape – a remodelling that took at least 50 years.

However, from outside the hall’s walls, the most eye-catching aspect is the eye-catcher on Pilmoor Hill: the Oliver Duckett, which is a folly fortress built by the previous owner of Aske, Sir Conyers D’Arcy a few years before the sale.

It is a round tower with gun holes in it and it is made with stone taken from Richmond Castle.

“Duckett” may have been a local pronunciation of “dovecote”, and there is the Aske estate hamlet of Olliver – with two els – just below the Oliver Duckett.

Walls

A SURVEY in 1988 found more than 8,000km of drystone walling in the Yorkshire Dales.

Groovy Grove

THE Grove is a large, raised mansion at the foot of Frenchgate with great views over the Swale. It was built in 1750 by Caleb Readshaw, a mayor of Richmond, who made his money by exporting locally knitted woollen caps and stockings to the Low Countries. It is made of fashionable red bricks, which were made in a nearby kiln, and it once had a grove of trees in its back garden.

Walburn Hall

ANOTHER landmark location is this curious 15th Century hall, with a crenelated wall, beside a bridge over a beck on a sharp turn of the A6108 out of Downholme.

Beneath the fields is a lost medieval village which once had two rows of house facing each other with a wide village green and the stream running through the middle.

Mary, Queen of Scots, once stayed at Walburn Hall and the sharp turn is where the medieval main road once went direct into Richmond.

Very old man

HENRY JENKINS, of Ellerton-on-Swale near Scorton, claimed to have been born in 1500. He carried arrows to the English archers at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513, swam in rivers when he was 100, and in 1667 appeared in court and claimed to be “one hundred and fifty seaven or thereabouts”. He died in December 1670 aged 169, and in 1743 a memorial obelisk was erected over his grave in Bolton-on-Swale church.

Riding the Stang

AS regular readers will know, “riding the stang” was a riotous folk punishment for those deemed guilty of adultery. In 1867 in Frenchgate, 400 people rode the stang outside the house of Mrs Moore, whose effigy they burned, to highlight her crimes.

In 1900 at Stainmore, on the A66, the married vicar fell in love with the much younger schoolmistress. Six local people rode the stang and appeared in court charged with lashing the naughty vicar to a gate and taking him to face his wife.

Crackpot Hall

FOLLOWING on from the previous page, Crackpot, which is high above the Swale near Muker, is probably Viking for “a deep hole or chasm that is a haunt of crows”. Crackpot was probably originally a 16th Century hunting lodge

It has an air of remoteness about it, and in the 1930s, a “wild child” was found roaming the moors of Crackpot. She is believed to have been Alice Harker, who was born in the semi-derelict hall, and she made the national news by turning feral.

Secret Richmond & Swaledale, by Andrew Graham Stables (£14.99, Amberley Publishing)