Gordon Home

CHAPTER VIII
SKIPTON, MALHAM AND GORDALE

When I think of Skipton I am never quite sure whether to look upon it as a manufacturing centre or as one of the picturesque market towns of the dale country. If you arrive by train, you come out of the station upon such vast cotton-mills, and such a strong flavour of the bustling activity of the southern parts of Yorkshire, that you might easily imagine that the capital of Craven has no part in any holiday-making portion of the county. But if you come by road from Bolton Abbey, you enter the place at a considerable height, and, passing round the margin of the wooded Haw Beck, you have a fine view of the castle, as well as the church and the broad and not unpleasing market-place. Beyond these appear the chimneys and the smoke of the manufacturing and railway side of the town, almost entirely separate from the old world and historic portion on the higher ground. When you are on the castle ramparts the factories appear much less formidable—in fact, they seem to shrink into quite a small area owing to the great bare hills that rise up on all sides.

On this sunny morning, as we make our way towards the castle, we find the attractive side of Skipton entirely unspoiled by any false impression given by the factories. The smoke which the chimneys make appears in the form of a thin white mist against the brown moors beyond, and everything is very clean and very bright after heavy rain. The gateway of the castle is flanked by two squat towers. They are circular and battlemented, and between them upon a parapet, which is higher than the towers themselves, appears the motto of the Cliffords, ‘Desormais’ (hereafter), in open stone letters. Beyond the gateway stands a great mass of buildings with two large round towers just in front; to the right, across a sloping lawn, appears the more modern and inhabited portion of the castle. The squat round towers gain all our attention, but as we pass through the doorways into the courtyard beyond, we are scarcely prepared for the astonishingly beautiful quadrangle that awaits us. It is small, and the centre is occupied by a great yew-tree, whose tall, purply-red trunk goes up to

THE COURTYARD OF SKIPTON CASTLE

The buildings of this portion of the castle, although in such good preservation, are not occupied.

the level of the roofs without any branches or even twigs, but at that height it spreads out freely into a feathery canopy of dark green, covering almost the whole of the square of sky visible from the courtyard. The base of the trunk is surrounded by a massive stone seat, with plain shields on each side. The sunlight that comes through this green network is very much subdued when it falls upon walls and the pavement, which becomes strewn over with circular splashes of whiteness. The masonry of the walls on every side, where not showing the original red of the sandstone, has been weathered into beautiful emerald tints, and to a height of two or three feet there is a considerable growth of moss on the worn mouldings. The general appearance of the courtyard suggests more that of a manor-house than a castle, the windows and doorways being purely Tudor. The circular towers and other portions of the walls belong to the time of Edward II., and there is also a roundheaded door that cannot be later than the time of Robert de RomillÉ, one of the Conqueror’s followers. The rooms that overlook the shady quadrangle are very much decayed and entirely unoccupied. They include an old dining-hall of much picturesqueness, kitchens, pantries, and butteries, some of them only lighted by narrow windows on the outer faces of the wall. There are many large bedrooms and other dark apartments in the towers. Only a little restoration would be required to put a great portion of these into habitable condition, for they are structurally in a good state of repair, as may be seen to some extent from the picture of the courtyard reproduced here. The destruction caused during the siege which took place during the Civil War might have brought Skipton Castle to much the same condition as Knaresborough but for the wealth and energy of that remarkable woman Lady Anne Clifford, who was born here in 1589. She was the only surviving child of George, the third Earl of Cumberland, and grew up under the care of her mother, Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, of whom Lady Anne used to speak as ‘my blessed mother.’ Her reverence for the memory of this admirable parent is also shown in the feeling which prompted her to put up a pillar by the roadside, between Penrith and Appleby, to commemorate their last meeting, and, besides this, the Lady Anne left a sum of money to be given to the poor at that spot on a certain day every year. After her first marriage with Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, Lady Anne married the profligate Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. She was widowed a second time in 1649, and after that began the period of her munificence and usefulness. With immense enthusiasm, she undertook the work of repairing the castles that belonged to her family, Brougham, Appleby, Barden Tower, and Pendragon being restored as well as Skipton. We can see in the towers where the later work begins, and the custodian who shows us through the apartments points out many details which are invisible without the aid of his candle.

Besides attending to the decayed castles, the Countess repaired no less than seven churches, and to her we owe the careful restoration of the parish church of Skipton. She began the repairs to the sacred building even before she turned her attention to the wants of the castle. In her private memorials we read how, ‘In the summer of 1665 ... at her own charge, she caus’d the steeple of Skipton Church to be built up againe, which was pull’d down in the time of the late Warrs, and leaded it over, and then repaired some part of the Church and new glaz’d the Windows, in every of which Window she put quaries, stained with a yellow colour, these two letters—viz., A. P., and under them the year 1655.... Besides, she raised up a noble Tomb of Black Marble in memory of her Warlike Father.’ This magnificent altar-tomb still stands within the Communion rails on the south side of the chancel. It is adorned with seventeen shields, and Whitaker doubted ‘whether so great an assemblage of noble bearings can be found on the tomb of any other Englishman.’ This third Earl was a notable figure in the reign of Elizabeth, and having for a time been a great favourite with the Queen, he received many of the posts of honour she loved to bestow. He was a skilful and daring sailor, helping to defeat the Spanish Armada, and building at his own expense one of the greatest fighting ships of his time, Elizabeth—who, like the present German Emperor, never lost an opportunity of fostering the growth of her navy—being present at the launching ceremony.

The memorials of Lady Anne give a description of her appearance in the manner of that time: ‘The colour of her eyes was black like her Father’s,’ we are told, ‘with a peak of hair on her forehead, and a dimple in her chin, like her father. The hair of her head was brown and very thick, and so long that it reached to the calf of her legs when she stood upright; and when she caused these memorials of herself to be written (she had passed the year 63 of her age), she said the perfections of her mind were much above those of her body; she had a strong and copious memory, a sound judgment, and a discerning spirit, and so much of a strong imagination in her as that at many times even her dreams and apprehensions beforehand proved true.’ The Countess died at the great age of eighty-seven at Brougham Castle in Westmoreland, and was buried in the Church of St. Lawrence at Appleby.

We cannot leave these old towers of Skipton Castle without going back to the days of John, the ninth Lord Clifford, that ‘Bloody Clifford’ who was one of the leaders of the Lancastrians at Wakefield, where his merciless slaughter earned him the title of ‘the Butcher.’ He died by a chance arrow the night before the Battle of Towton, so fatal to the cause of Lancaster, and Lady Clifford and the children took refuge in her father’s castle at Brough. For greater safety Henry, the heir, was placed under the care of a shepherd whose wife had nursed the boy’s mother when a child. In this way the future baron grew up as an entirely uneducated shepherd lad, spending his days on the fells in the primitive fashion of the peasants of the fifteenth century. When he was about twelve years old Lady Clifford, hearing rumours that the whereabouts of her children had become known, sent the shepherd and his wife with the boy into an extremely inaccessible part of Cumberland. He remained there until his thirty-second year, when the Battle of Bosworth placed Henry VII. on the throne. Then the shepherd lord was brought to Londesborough, and when the family estates had been restored, he went back to Skipton Castle. The strangeness of his new life being irksome to him, Lord Clifford spent most of his time in Barden Forest at one of the keeper’s lodges, which he adapted for his own use. There he hunted and studied astronomy and astrology with the canons of Bolton.

At Flodden Field he led the men-at-arms from Craven, and showed that by his life of extreme simplicity he had in no way diminished the traditional valour of the Cliffords. When he died they buried him at Bolton Abbey, where many of his ancestors lay, and as his successor died after the dissolution of the monasteries, the ‘Shepherd Lord’ was the last to be buried in that secluded spot by the Wharfe.

Skipton has always been a central spot for the exploration of this southern portion of the dales, and since the Midland Railway has lately put out an arm to the north, there are lines going in five directions. The new branch that goes into Wharfedale stops just before it reaches Grassington, and has an intermediate station with a triple name in consideration of the fact that it is placed at almost exactly the same distance from the three villages of Hetton, Rylstone, and Cracoe. Whether we go by road or rail, we have good views of Flasby and Rylstone Fells as we pass along the course of Eller Beck to the romantically situated village made famous by Wordsworth’s ballad of ‘The White Doe of Rylstone.’ The site of the old manor-house where the Nortons lived may still be seen in a field to the east of the church. Owing to the part they took in the Rising of the North in 1569 the Nortons lost all their property in Yorkshire, and among the humble folk of Rylstone who shared in the rebellion there was Richard Kitchen, Mr. Norton’s butler, who lost much more, for he was executed at Ripon. From Hetton we follow a road to the west, and passing the hamlet of Winterburn, come to Airton, where there are some interesting old houses, one of them dating from the year of the Great Fire of London. Turning to the north, we come to Kirby Malham, less than two miles off. It is a pretty little village with green limestone hills rising on all sides; a rushing beck coming off Kirby Fell takes its way past the church, and there is an old vicarage as well as some picturesque cottages.

We find our way to a decayed lych-gate, whose stones are very black and moss-grown, and then get a close view of the Perpendicular church. The interior is full of interest, not only on account of the Norman font and the canopied niches in the pillars of the nave, but also for the old pews. The Malham people seemingly found great delight in recording their names on the woodwork of the pews, for carefully carved initials and dates appear very frequently. All the pews have been cut down to the accepted height of the present day with the exception of some on the north side which were occupied by the more important families, and these still retain their squareness and the high balustrades above the panelled lower portions. One of the parish registers has the rare distinction of containing Oliver Cromwell’s signature to a marriage. There is also the entry of the baptism on November 7, 1619, of John Lambert, who became famous as Major-General in the Roundhead army.

Just under the moorland heights surrounding Malham Tarn is the other village of Malham. It is a charming spot, even in the gloom of a wintry afternoon. The houses look on to a strip of uneven green, cut in two, lengthways, by the Aire. We go across the clear and sparkling waters by a rough stone footbridge, and, making our way past a farm, find ourselves in a few minutes at Gordale Bridge. Here we abandon the switchback lane, and, climbing a wall, begin to make our way along the side of the beck. The fells drop down fairly sharply on each side, and in the failing light there seems no object in following the stream any further, when quite suddenly the green slope on the right stands out from a scarred wall of rock beyond, and when we are abreast of the opening we find ourselves before a vast fissure that leads right into the heart of the fell. The great split is S-shaped in plan, so that when we advance into its yawning mouth we are surrounded by limestone cliffs more than 300 feet high. If one visits Gordale Scar for the first time alone on a gloomy evening, as I have done, I can promise the most thrilling sensations to those who have yet to see this astonishing sight. It almost appeared to me as though I were dreaming, and that I was Aladin approaching the magician’s palace. I had read some of the eighteenth-century writers’ descriptions of the place, and imagined that their vivid accounts of the terror inspired by the overhanging rocks were mere exaggerations, but now I sympathize with every word. The scars overhang so much on the east side that there is not much space to get out of reach of the water that drips from every portion. Great masses of stone were lying upon the bright strip of turf, and among them I noticed some that could not have been there long; this made me keep close under the cliff in justifiable fear of another fall. I stared with apprehension at one rock that would not only kill, but completely bury, anyone upon whom it fell, and I thought those old writers had underrated the horrors of the place. Through a natural arch in the rocks that faced me came a foaming torrent broken up below into a series of cascades, and the roar of the waters in the confined space added much to the fear that was taking possession of me. It was owing to the curious habit that waterfalls have of seeming to become suddenly louder that I must own to that sense of fearfulness, for at one moment the noise

sounded so suddenly different that I was convinced that a considerable fall of stones had commenced among the crags overhead, and that in a moment they would crash into the narrow cleft. Common-sense seemed to urge an immediate retreat, for there was too much water coming down the falls to allow me to climb out that way, as I could otherwise have done. The desire to carry away some sort of picture of the fearsome place was, however, triumphant, and the result is given in this chapter.

Wordsworth writes of

and he also describes it as one of the grandest objects in nature.

A further result of the Craven fault that produced Gordale Scar can be seen at Malham Cove, about a mile away. There the cliff forms a curved front 285 feet high, facing the open meadows down below. The limestone is formed in layers of great thickness, dividing the face of the cliff into three fairly equal sections, the ledges formed at the commencement of each stratum allowing of the growth of bushes and small trees. A hard-pressed fox is said to have taken refuge on one of these precarious ledges, and finding his way stopped in front, he tried to turn, and in doing so fell and was killed.

At the base of the perpendicular face of the cliff the Aire flows from a very slightly arched recess in the rock. It is a really remarkable stream in making its dÉbut without the slightest fuss, for it is large enough at its very birth to be called a small river. Its modesty is a great loss to Yorkshire, for if, instead of gathering strength in the hidden places in the limestone fells, it were to keep to more rational methods, it would flow to the edge of the Cove, and there precipitate itself in majestic fashion into a great pool below. There is some reason for believing that on certain occasions in the past the stream has taken the more showy course, and if sufficient cement could be introduced into some of the larger fissures above, a fall might be induced to occur after every period of heavy rain. All the romance would perhaps disappear if we knew that the effect was artificial, and therefore we would no doubt be wiser to remain content with the Cove as it is.