Ripon is situated on the little river Ure in a picturesque valley in the west of Yorkshire.  Its past history has been eventful enough, for it was burnt by the Danes in the ninth century, destroyed by King Edred, and laid waste by the Conqueror.  It recovered quickly from all these adversities, and is now a peaceful town given up to agricultural pursuits.  Besides possessing a small but interesting old cathedral and some ancient houses in its town, many places of historic importance lie in its immediate neighbourhood.  Fountains Abbey is 3 miles distant (see Index), and also Fountains Hall, a fifteenth-century building.  An interesting relic of old times is the blowing of the horn at nine in the evening by a constable outside the mayor’s house and at the market-cross.

Ripon’s minster became a cathedral in 1836.  In the seventh century a monastery was established here, and St. Wilfrid, the famous Archbishop of York, built the minster.  Of this building only the crypt remains, consisting of a central chamber with niches in the walls, and a window known as “St. Wilfrid’s Needle” looking into the passage outside.  It is reached by steps and a long passage leading from the nave of the present cathedral.  Only the chapter-house and vestry remain of Archbishop Thurstan’s Norman church, erected in the place of the Anglo-Saxon one, for Roger, Archbishop of York, pulled it down and began to erect the present building in (circa) 1154.  Being only a Collegiate Church in those days, it was not built in a cathedral fashion, and it had no aisles to its wide and low-roofed nave.  The present aisles were added in the sixteenth century, with the intention of giving a cathedral aspect to the minster church.  Much of Roger’s work has been altered by subsequent bishops, and the result is a strange succession of styles of architecture.  Ripon is the only cathedral that has glass in the triforium of the choir.

The exterior, viewed from a distance, is a little squat, for it needs the timber spires that formerly crowned the three towers.

[Illustration:  Photochrom Co., Ltd.

RIPON CATHEDRAL—­THE MINSTER BRIDGE.]

DARTMOOR

=How to get there.=—­Train from Paddington.  Great Western Railway. =Nearest Station.=—­Bovey Tracey. =Distance from London.=—­215-1/2 miles. =Average Time.=—­Varies between 6 to 7 hours.

                     1st 2nd 3rd
=Fares.=—­Single 33s. 0d. 20s. 6d. 16s. 5-1/2d. 
          Return 57s. 9d. 36s. 0d. 32s. 11d.

=Accommodation Obtainable.=—­At Bovey Tracey—­“The Dolphin,”
  “The Railway,” “The Moorland” Hotels.
=Alternative Route.=—­Train to Okehampton from Waterloo.  L. and
  S.W.  Railway.  Okehampton is 5 miles from Sourton and 10
  from Lydford.