The Minster of St. John of Beverley is easily the finest single example of Perpendicular architecture in England; in beauty and majesty of design, in proportion and in general effect—from almost any viewpoint—there is no more pleasing church in the Kingdom. We come in sight of its graceful twin towers while yet afar from the town, after a thirty-mile run from York through some of the most prosperous farming country in the shire. As we come nearer, the mass of red tiles, from which rises the noble bulk of the minster, resolves itself into the houses of the old town, whose ancient heart has lost none of its charm in the little city which has more recently grown up around it. As we emerge from a narrow street bordered with mean little houses, the great church suddenly bursts on our view and we pause to admire its vast yet perfect proportions, its rich carvings, and the multitude of graceful pinnacles. We enter, but the caretaker receives us with little enthusiasm, though at our request he shows us about in a rather reserved manner. A card on the wall explains mat The St. John from whom the minster took its name was Archbishop of York and founded a church on the present site in the sixth century. He died in 731 and, tradition says, is buried in the minster. But Beverley’s most distinguishing historic fact is that it was one of the three “sanctuaries of refuge” in England. Here, by the strange edict of the early church, any criminal who could evade his pursuers might take refuge in the precincts of Beverley Minster and for thirty days be entitled to the protection and hospitality of the monks, after There is much else of interest in the minster, though we may not linger over its attractions save to mention the Percy tomb, reputed the finest in Europe—and indeed, its rare marbles and delicate sculptures must represent a princely fortune. Nor could we have more than a passing glimpse of St. Mary’s Church, second only to the minster in importance, for Beverley is the only town in England of anywhere near its size that has the distinction of possessing two churches of really the first magnitude. Following the road from Beverley to the coast The road closely follows the coast to Scarborough, the queen of Yorkshire watering-places. We caught frequent glimpses of the ocean, which, once out of the shadows of the towering cliffs, stretched away until its deep—almost metallic—blue faded against the silvery horizon. We soon found ourselves on the handsome main street of the new town, which brought us to the waterfront at the foot of castle hill. An old man approached us, seeing our hesitation, and informed us that the new road around the promontory, one of the finest drives in England, was open—not officially open, to be sure, and it would not be until some of the “Nobs” came and the ceremonies of a formal dedication were performed. The road had been cut in the almost sheer side of the cliff, a broad driveway overlooking the varied scenery of coast and ocean—the latter now as mild and softly shimmering as a quiet inland lake. One could only imagine, on such a day, how the sea must rage and thunder against Scarborough is unique in its combination of the old and the modern; but few of its rivals can boast of a castle with a history reaching back to the wars with the Danish invaders. Brighton and Eastbourne, sometimes ranked with Scarborough, are quite recent and lack the distinction that comes of centuries. Scarborough Castle, perched on its mighty rock, still presents a formidable appearance and impresses one with the tremendous strength its situation and heavy walls gave it before gunpowder brought such things to naught. From the keep tower a far-reaching prospect lies beneath us; a panorama of the sea chafing on the broken coast, and to the landward are the barren moors that encircle the town. There is not much of the fortress left, but the fragments are carefully guarded from decay and in places have been somewhat restored. There is a museum near the entrance to the keep, Few indeed are the places which bring back more delightful memories or a greater longing to return than Whitby—old, straggling, storm-beaten Whitby—climbing up its steep hill crowned by one of the most unique churches and stateliest abbey ruins in all Britain. The road which takes us from Scarborough to its ancient rival is a wild one, wandering around the black, heather-splotched hills with trying grades which make careful driving necessary. To the right the ocean still shimmers in the setting sun and in nooks on the coast we catch glimpses of fishing villages—among them Robin Hood’s Bay, called by some the most picturesque of the smaller fishing-towns in England. Long before we come into Whitby we catch sight of the skeleton of the abbey on the headland, standing almost weirdly against the evening sky. We descend a long, winding hill and find ourselves threading our way through crooked, narrow streets thronged with people who get out of the way only when they have to. Passing between rows of old houses crowding closely on either hand, we cross the bridge over the inlet and ascend the sharp hill where the hotels face the town and abbey on the opposite cliff. Thither we wend our way after dinner, just as the daylight begins to fade, and passing through the devious The ruin is deserted and we find ourselves sole possessors of Whitby Abbey at an hour when the twilight softens the outlines and touches with gray and purple hues the old town at our feet and the rough moorland hills in the background, while the wide expanse of ocean glows mysteriously from the reflection of the dim-lit skies. The ruin rises abruptly from the soft greensward upon which the cows are contentedly grazing, and near at hand, gleaming darkly in the fading light, lies the fish pool, which lends much to the picturesqueness of the surroundings. The great church has fallen into complete ruin; decay is riot everywhere. Only half a century ago the central tower crashed to the earth, carrying many arches and pillars with it, and huge fragments of masonry still lie scattered about as if fallen from some thunder-riven cliff. Whitby Abbey is rich in legend, and at such an hour we will trouble ourselves little about sober fact—let mystery wrap the ruin even as the mantle of gathering darkness; for us it shall be only the “High Whitby’s cloistered pile” of romance. We pass outside the abbey confines and pause before St. Mary’s Church, a long squat building with low tower, as bald and plain as the abbey is pretentious WHITBY ABBEY AND CROSS. As we return to our hotel, we are attracted into one of the old-town shops by a display of old brass and silver, and the genial proprietor at once establishes a basis of community, for has he not been in the States and has he not a brother there now? We pick up an antique lantern with dingy horn doors and green with verdigris and try the stale joke, “Made in Birmingham,” which once or twice has brought a storm of indignant protest on our heads. But it does not so excite our Yorkshire friend. “Yes,” he said, “I had a dozen copies made of a very rare piece that came into my hands. And that accounts for the price—genuine antiques are so rare and so sought for that the original would cost you many times the copy—and after all, you would be no better off when you had it.” We cannot resist such confidence and add further to our burden of oddities such as one gathers, willy nilly, in a tour of the nooks and corns. Whitby shops are full of jet ornaments—brooches, beads, On the following day we again wander about the old-world streets of the town, which we find ourselves loath to leave. The morning’s catch is just in at the fish-market and the finny tribes of all degrees are sorted on the pavement and sold to the townspeople. The fishing industry of Whitby is now on a small scale only; in former days it constituted a source of some wealth. The ballad writer celebrating Robin Hood’s visit to Whitby gives this very good reason: “The fishermen more money have Than any merchants two or three.” And thus the sturdy highwayman found it easy to replenish his exchequer from the fat purses of Whitby folk. It may be, though, that the isolated situation of the town between the wild moors and the sea, and its good harbor for small vessels, made the occupation of smuggling especially profitable, and the wealth of the old-time citizens of Whitby may have been augmented by this practice. IN OLD WHITBY. Our route out of the town led through the Cleveland Hills, the roughest and loneliest of the Yorkshire moors. We climbed many steep, rugged hills and dropped down sharp, dangerous slopes; From Guisborough our road ran through a level, fertile farming country. We missed Middlesbrough, a manufacturing city of one hundred thousand, whose array of factory chimneys loomed up thickly across the fields, and soon came into Stockton-on-Tees, about half the size of its neighbor. It lies directly on the river, here a black, turbid stream, sullied by the factories that crowd its banks. We hesitated entering the Black Lion—it had an uncanny look that made us distrust even the infallible Baedeker. No one except the busy barmaids was to be seen. A few glances about the place confirmed our suspicions and we What a contrast to the Black Lion we found in its next-door neighbor, the Vane Arms, a fine type of the hospitable old-time English inn. Its massive, richly carved furniture would delight the heart of the connoisseur and is the pride of the stately landlady, who sat at the head of the table and treated us as though we were guests in more than the perfunctory hotel parlance. In the desert of daily hotel life one does not easily forget such an oasis as the Vane Arms. It is the only thing I can think of that might make one wish to linger in Stockton-on-Tees. The road to Darlington is excellent, though sinuous, and we found in that bustling city little evidence of the antiquity vouched for by its twelfth century church. It is now a railway center and has been since the first passenger train in England ran over the Darlington & Stockton Railway in 1825. In going to Barnard Castle we proceeded by the way of Staindrop, though the direct road by the Tees is the best. But the route we chose passes Raby Castle, which burst on our view shortly before we reached Staindrop,—a huge gray pile, half fortress, half palace, with many square battlemented towers and crenelated turrets, all combining to fulfill the very ideal of the magnificence of feudal days. Permission to visit the castle was easily gained from the estate agent at Staindrop. It would be The castle dates from the thirteenth century. By fortunate chance it escaped the ravages of war, and having been continuously occupied—indeed, there is a legend that its hearth-fire has never died out in five hundred years—it is one of the most perfect examples of its type in England. The exterior has not been greatly altered, but inside it has been much modernized and transformed into a palatial and richly furnished residence. In the library is a collection of costly books; the gallery has many rare portraits and pictures; and scattered about the different apartments are many valuable objects of art, among these the famous marble, “The Greek Slave,” by Powers, the American sculptor. Least altered of all is the medieval kitchen, RABY CASTLE. Raby cannot greatly boast of historic events, yet it is interesting to know that it was once the home of the younger Sir Henry Vane, who was governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1636. It was built by the Nevilles in 1370, but passed to other hands two hundred years later, when that family took part in the Catholic uprising in the north. But after all, Raby is far more interesting as a survival of the “days of roselight and romance” than would be the story of the tenure of this or that forgotten lord or earl. Barnard Castle takes its name from the ancient fortress whose scanty ruin still looms over the town. It stands on a cliff which drops from the castle wall almost sheer to the shallow Tees beneath. One thinks first of Dickens’ association with the town and naturally enough hastens to the King’s Head, where the novelist’s room is still shown. The King’s Head we found a comfortable, well-managed, old-time inn, an excellent headquarters for excursions to the many interesting points of the vicinity. We reached here early in the afternoon, affording us time for a fifteen-mile jaunt up the Tees Valley to the High Force—they call a waterfall the “force” in Yorkshire—the largest cataract in England, we were told. It is situated in a lovely dell, and while the flood of white water pouring over the jagged cliff into the brown boiling lake below is pretty and striking, it has nothing awe inspiring or majestic about it. True, at the time, the Tees was at lowest ebb; a long drouth had reduced it to a fourth its normal volume and of course we did not see the High Force at its best. Every spot of interest in the Kingdom has its inn and it was in the farmyard of the High Force Hotel that we left the car. On returning from the falls, a deflated We returned to Barnard Castle following the road north of the Tees—we had come to Middleton on the south side of the river—and we had an almost continual view of the winding stream and its pleasantly diversified valley. It was a peaceful rural landscape, glimmering in the twilight—the silver thread of the river running through it—that greeted our view during our swift flight along the upland road. It was the end of a rather trying day and it seemed hardly possible that we had sojourned in Old Whitby only the night before—so different was |