Arncliffe and Littondale

Littondale comprises the main settlements of Hawkswick, Arncliffe, Litton, Foxup and Halton Gill, and farmhouses that date from the 17th century. The main waterway in the dale is the River Skirfare which is fed by many small gills and becks.

 

It runs roughly parallel to Wharfedale about 3 miles west of Kettlewell

Littondale is rich in Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements, and has been a sheltered fertile valley for 5,000 years or more. Saxon cultivation terraces (lynchets) can be seen in the valley. After the Conquest, the Normans turned it into a hunting chase before the land was granted to the monks of Fountains Abbey in the 13th century, and became extensively used for sheep farming

View of Arncliffe in the distance

Arncliffe is a small village and civil parish the largest of Littondale's four settlements. St Oswald's church lies close to the river a little North of the village, and the road up the dale crosses the river past Bridge End where Charles Kingsley stayed

Arncliffe's houses, cottages, and other buildings face in towards a large green, and outwards to green hillsides etched with limestone scars. A barn to the north of the green is a good example of the local style, with an unusual entrance, and a datestone of 1677.

Arncliffe was the original setting for the fictional village of Beckindale in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale Farm, from its inception in 1972 until the relocation to Esholt

On Firth Fell between Litton and Buckden. This Trigpoint (Flush Bracket S5499) is 1551st in the Triggy Charts

Around Kettlewell

Whilst in Kettlewell, I went on a short tour of the village

Kettlewell Garage which was first built in the 1920s and since 1946 has been run by the same family

Opposite is The Cottage Tea Room and Bed and Breakfast which dates mainly from the 19th century. 

The Smithy Gift Shop, it was last used as a smithy in the early 1960s

War Memorial built to commemorate the fallen of the two WorldWars, if you look carefully you will see that the village of Starbotton is miss spelt. 

Standing within the gardens are the old village stocks which originally stood along the Coniston Road.

The Maypole dated 1898. To commemorate the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, The W.I. erected the present maypole. It stands where the village green once was and although the green has gone the area around it still bears that name

The Kings Head (now closed) which dates from the 17th century, is thought to have once been a mill and then a workhouse

The Village Store was built in 1876 by Mr. Inman from the stone taken from the mill that once stood opposite

Tea Shop

In the beck you can still see the remains of the concrete pillars which supported the pipeline carrying water to the Electricity Generating House (the small building over the beck). 

Kettlewell was one of the first villages in the country to have its own electricity supply from 1913 to 1950s. 

Langcliffe Garth where you can find Honeysuckle Cottage and Lynburn Bed and Breakfast. This is a pleasant area of the village with its well-tended green.

The Racehorses Hotel, originally a stable block for the Blue Bell Inn. The Race Horses is believed to derive its name from the trace horses, and these animals were hired as extra power to pull heavy wagons up Park Rash. The present hotel was built in 1740.

The Blue Bell Inn is the original coaching inn dating back to 1680, being on the ancient route through Kettlewell to Middleham and the North

The Village Hall - built in 1926

For more details of this walk around Kettlewell see link A walk around Kettlewell

Bolton Abbey and the Dales Way

During my stay in Kettlewell I decided to walk the Dales Way from Bolton Abbey to Buckden (4 miles north of Kettlewell). This post covers the stretch from Bolton Abbey to Grassington.

For those who do not know, the Dales Way is an 84-mile Long Distance Footpath from Ilkley, West Yorkshire to Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria and passes through two National Parks - the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the Lake District National Park. The first half of the walk follows the River Wharfe upstream to the main watershed of northern England at Ribblehead. The second half follows several river valleys (Dentdale, River Mint, River Kent) to descend to the shores of Windermere.

I travelled from Kettlewell to Bolton Abbey by bus and train - see earlier post on Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway. Bolton Abbey is an estate in Wharfedale which takes its name from the ruined 12th-century Augustinian monastery now generally known as Bolton Priory. It is adjacent to the village of Bolton Abbey.

The Domesday Book lists Bolton Abbey as the caput manor of a multiple estate including 77 carucates of ploughland (9240 acres) belonging to Earl Edwin. The estate then comprised Bolton Abbey, Halton East, Embsay, Draughton; Skibeden, Skipton, Low Snaygill, Thorlby; Addingham, Beamsley, Holme, Gargrave; Stainton, Otterburn, Scosthrop, Malham, Anley; Coniston Cold, Hellifield and Hanlith. 

The monastery was originally founded at Embsay in 1120. Led by a prior, Bolton Abbey was technically a priory, despite its name. It was founded in 1154 by the Augustinian order, on the banks of the River Wharfe. The land at Bolton, as well as other resources, were given to the order by Lady Alice de Romille of Skipton Castle in 1154. The Romille line died out c1310 so Edward II granted his estates to Robert Clifford. 

In 1748 Baroness Clifford married William Cavendish so Bolton Abbey Estate thereafter belonged to the Dukes of Devonshire until a trust was set up by the 11th Duke of Devonshire turning it over to the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees to steward.

The remains of the priory can still be seen, and the setting is immortalised in both in art and poetry. These include a painting by Edwin Landseer and watercolours by J. M. W. Turner one of which, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire (1809), is held at the British Museum. William Wordsworth's poem The White Doe of Rylstone was inspired by a visit to Bolton Abbey in 1807

My start of the Dales Way was at these stepping stones 

I was soon in picturesque Strid Wood. The spectacular Strid is where the broad River Wharfe becomes suddenly narrow and the water rushes with great force. The Strid was formed by the wearing away of softer rock by the circular motion of small stones in hollows, forming a series of potholes which in time linked together to form a deep, water filled chasm. 

This ancient woodland is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of the largest areas of acidic oak woodland in the Yorkshire Dales

Then on to Barden Bridge and Barden Tower. Barden means “valley where the barley grew” and the tower was originally one of six hunting lodges within the forest of Barden

The principal hunting lodge of the ancient Forest of Barden and home of the 10th Lord of Skipton, more commonly known as the Shepherd Lord. The ruined tower overlooks the Priest's House, built in the early 16th century which the Shepherd Lord built for his private Chaplain

Then onwards to Grassington along the banks of the Wharfe

For further details of the Dales Way see link Dales Way

Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway

During my stay in Kettlewell, I took the opportunity to visit this splendid railway

The Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway (E&BASR) is a heritage railway in North Yorkshire, (formed in 1968 and re-opened in 1981).

Embsay railway station, built in 1888, is near Skipton.

Our steam engine today was "Norman"

The route was formerly part of the Midland Railway line that connected Skipton and Ilkley via Addingham. The line was shut down by British Railways in 1965 and was left to rest in disrepair.

The rolling stock on the line consists of 20 ex-industrial locomotives, the oldest of which was built in 1908; three diesel-multiple units; and ten other diesel locomotives

Around 14 years later in 1979 a group of volunteers put forward a plan to reopen the line as a preservation route. This plan went ahead and Embsay railway station was refurbished throughout the second half of the 70's and reopened in 1981

The E&BASR currently runs for a total distance of 4 miles (6 km) from Embsay via Draughton Sidings, Holywell and Stoneacre Loop to Bolton Abbey station

I travelled First Class - luxury

Bolton Abbey railway station finally reopened in 1998. Bolton Abbey village is named after a nearby ruined 12th century priory, belonging to the Dukes of Devonshire - more details of this will be in another posting.

Our driver was a retired Headmaster from a school near Leyburn

The railway has a long-term objective to extend the line in both directions south to the West Yorkshire village of Addingham and north towards the North Yorkshire market town of Skipton (where the E&BSR could one day interchange with services on the Airedale Line)

For more details of this splendid Steam railway see Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway