The stately Castle of Mulgrave, now the home of the Phipps family—Marquises of Normanby—was built by Peter de Malo-lacu or de Mauley, in the reign of King John. Cox says, "he built a castle here for his defence, which, from its beauty and the grace it was to this place, he named it Moultgrace, but because it proved afterwards a great grievance to the neighbours thereabouts, the people, who will in such cases take a liberty to nickname places and things by changing one letter for another—c for v—called it Moultgrave, by which name alone for many ages it hath been and is now everywhere known, though the reason thereof is by few understood." A previous castle, with the barony, had been held by the de Turnhams, and the last male heir, Robert, having died without issue male, the barony and castle were inherited by his only daughter, Isabel, who, as was then the law respecting heiresses, became a ward of the Crown, and her hand at the disposal of the King. This Peter de Malo-lacu, or Peter of the Evil Eye, was a Poictevin of brutal and ferocious character, who was made use of by King John as the instrument for the murder of his nephew Arthur, for which piece of service he rewarded the murderer with the hand of the fair Isabel, with her inheritance.

But long before the de Mauleys and the de Turnhams, a noble Saxon family were lords of the surrounding domain, and dwelt in a castle on an eminence here, about three or four miles from the seashore at Whitby. Leland says (temp. Hen. 8), "Mongrave Castel standeth on a craggy hille, and on eche side of it is a hille far higher than that whereon the castel standeth. The north hille on the topp of it hath certain stones, commonly caul'd Wadda's grave, whom the people there say to have bene a gigant and owner of Mongrave." And Camden, "Hard by upon a steep hill near the sea (which yet is between two that are much higher) a castle of Wade, a Saxon Duke, is said to have stood; who, in the confused anarchy of the Northumbrians, so fatal to the petty Princes, having combined with those that murdered King Ethered, gave battel to King Ardulph at Whalley, in Lancashire, but with such ill-sucess that his army was routed and himself forced to fly. Afterwards he fell into a distemper, which killed him, and was interred on a hill here between two solid rocks, about seven foot high, which being at twelve foot distance from one another, occasions a current opinion that he was of gyant-like stature."

It is with this Duke Wada that we are concerned. He appears to have been a Saxon, or rather an Anglian noble of considerable consequence in the kingdom of Northumbria, and to have taken a conspicuous part in the political movements of that troublous period, when, as Speed narrates, "the Northumbrians were sore molested with many intruders or rather tyrants that banded for the soueraintie for the space of thirtie years." He was a man of gigantic stature and a champion of redoubtable energy in war, dealing death around him and cumbering the field with the bodies of those who had fallen beneath the blows of his ponderous mace. He was indeed a true son of Woden in all respects, excepting that he had relinquished the hope of banqueting in the halls of the Walhalia, and appropriating the skulls of his enemies as drinking vessels; for through the influence of St. Hilda's Abbey of Streoneshalh, in the immediate vicinity, he had adopted the tenets of, if he did not regulate his life altogether according to, the principles of Christianity.

Now Wada was a married man, and had a helpmate of stature and proportions corresponding with his own. They were a well-matched couple, and seemed to have lived together in a state of ordinary connubial happiness, there being but one thing to disturb the even tenor of their lives, and that was that the lady had to go in all sorts of weather across a moor to milk her cows—a long and dreary journey even in summer, along the rough and stone strewn trackway, but more especially in winter, when the snow was frequently knee deep, and the bitter blasts of the north-east wind came careering over the sea and sweeping with relentless fury across the bleak and shelterless moorland.

Wada's Castle was a massive structure of stone, with round-headed unglazed windows, and a turret which commanded a fine outlook over the sea on one side, and the moorlands and Cleveland hills on the other. The rooms were of large size, as befitted the abode of a giant, but presented few of the appliances of comfort that are deemed commonplace essentials now-a-days. The walls were of bare stone, without drapery of any kind, and no ornamentation excepting some zigzag mouldings; the roofs were vaulted, and in those of large size supported at the intersections by one or more stunted round pillars; the windows were small, without glass, and furnished with wooden shutters to exclude the wind and rain in the inclement seasons of the year; and the furniture consisted of rough-hewn deal or oaken tables, and shapeless benches or stools, with an oaken coffer to hold valuables, and side shelves to hold wooden platters and vessels of earthenware. The fire in cold weather was made on the floor, of logs of wood or cuttings of peat, the smoke escaping as it could through the doorways or windows.

It was in such a room as this that Wada and his wife sat at breakfast, one rainy and boisterous morning. After devouring an enormous quantity of beef and swine's flesh, with manchets of oaten bread, washed down by repeated draughts of ale, Wada, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, rose and went to look forth at the weather.

Wada was not a ferocious giant, dragging along half-a-dozen damsels, with one hand, by their hair, to immure them in his dungeons, and grind their bones to make his bread, as was the wont of the Cornish giants of old; nor was he, like them, stupid and weak-minded, so as to be easily outwitted and destroyed by the immortal Jack. On the contrary, although valiant in war, he abused not his great strength by tyrannising and oppressing his vassals, lived on good terms with his neighbours, and was gentle and tender in all his domestic relations. Hence, when he looked through his window and saw the sea foaming with wrath, and a few fisher-boats tossed about by the waves in their endeavour to gain shelter in Whitby Bay, and saw the sleet driving across the moor, he heaved a sigh, saying, "Methinks, sweetheart, thou wilt have a rough passage over the moor this morning; would to Heaven that it were not necessary for thee so to do." "I care not much," she replied, "for the falling rain and the boisterous wind, rough as they may be, but experience more inconvenience and suffering from the roughness of the road I have to traverse daily, so bestrewn is it with obstacles and stumbling-blocks, and so many bog-holes and quagmires have I to pass through."

Now it chanced that a short while before this Wada, in one of his wanderings, came upon the road constructed by the Romans, from Eboracum, by way of Malton to the Bay of Filey, and was struck by the facilities it gave for travelling, as compared with the more modern Saxon roads, if roads they could be called, which were mere trackways, formed and trodden down by the feet of men and animals. When his wife made the above reply, this recurred to his memory, and after a few minutes musing, the thought struck him—Why should not he make a road on this pattern for the benefit of his wife, whom he loved so dearly, and whose toil and labours he would be glad to lessen at any cost to himself?

After turning the matter over in his mind as to the practicability of the project, he came to the conclusion that it was perfectly feasible. There was plenty of material close at hand, in the shingle on the beach, and he had sufficient strength and energy to level the inequalities and fill up the boggy places, so as to make a firm foundation, and to spread over the whole a layer of the stones gathered from the sea shore. Yes; it was perfectly practicable, and could be accomplished at the mere expense of a little labour. He explained the project to his wife, who was delighted with it, and undertook to bring up the stones whilst he placed them in position after forming the foundation.

They lost no time in commencing the work; he with his spade in the levelling and bog-filling operations, and she carrying up the shingle in her apron; and it went on apace day after day and week after week, soon presenting the appearance of a newly macadamised road of modern times, and was duly appreciated by Lady Wada in her daily tramps across the moor.

It chanced that when the road was nearly completed, in one of her journeys from the beach, laden with shingle, her apron strings gave way and her load fell to the earth, and there it was left (some twenty cart-loads), and remained until recent times as a monument of her industry and strength, and an incontestable evidence of the truth of the narrative. It was after this that Wada joined in the insurrection against Ethelred, the son of Moll, who, after his restoration from exile, put to death the Princes Alfus and Alwin, sons of King Alfwald, who were the rightful heirs to the crown, and repudiated his wife to marry Elfled, the daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, "which things," says Speed, "sate so neere the hearts of his subjects that they rebelliously rose in arms, and at Cobre miserably slew him, the 18th day of April, the yeare of Christ Jesus, 794." After which Wada and his confederates were defeated in battle by Duke Ardulph, one of the aspirants to the Crown, and fled to his castle, where he died of a terrible disorder, and was buried, as stated, between two huge stones.

The road leading from Dunsley Bay towards Malton still exists, and goes by the name of "Wada's Causeway," and one of the ribs of Wada's wife is preserved in the present Mulgrave Castle, but the present age is so incredulous in respect to the chronicles of the past that there are sceptics who assert that it is nothing more than the bone of a whale.

Wada was the ancestor of the widely ramified family of Wade, one of whom, at least—Marshal Wade—inherited the road-making skill of his ancestor. After the rebellion of 1715 he was sent into the Highlands as military governor, with the object of thoroughly subduing the country and rendering it less available as a place of refuge for rebels. With this view he constructed a series of military roads, where there had previously been only trackways, with which the people were so delighted that they set up a stone near Fort Augustus, with the inscription:—