(Distance walked twenty-one and a half miles.)

Sunday, October 22nd.

We spent a fairly quiet day at Pateley Bridge, where there was not a great deal to see.  What there was we must have seen, as we made good use of the intervals between the three religious services we attended in exploring the town and its immediate neighbourhood.  We had evidently not taken refuge in one of the inns described by Daniel Defoe, for we were some little distance from the parish church, which stood on a rather steep hill on the opposite bank of the river.  Near the church were the ruins of an older edifice, an ancient description running, “The old Chappel of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Pateley Brigg in Nidderdale.”  We climbed the hill, and on our way came to an old well on which was inscribed the following translation by Dryden from the Latin of Ovid [43 B.C.-A.D. 18]: 

  Ill Habits gather by unseen degrees,
  As Brooks run rivers—­Rivers run to Seas.

and then followed the words: 

  The way to church.

We did not go there “by unseen degrees,” but still we hoped our good habits might gather in like proportion.  We went to the parish church both morning and evening, and explored the graveyards, but though gravestones were numerous enough we did not find any epitaph worthy of record—­though one of the stones recorded the death in July 1755 of the four sons of Robert and Margaret Fryer, who were born at one birth and died aged one week.

In the afternoon we went to the Congregational Chapel, and afterwards were shown through a very old Wesleyan Chapel, built in 1776, and still containing the old seats, with the ancient pulpit from which John Wesley had preached on several occasions.

It was curious to observe how anxious the compilers of the histories of the various places at which we stayed were to find a remote beginning, and how apologetic they were that they could not start even earlier.  Those of Pateley Bridge were no exception to the rule.  The Roman Occupation might perhaps have been considered a reasonable foundation, but they were careful to record that the Brigantes were supposed to have overrun this district long before the Romans, since several stone implements had been found in the neighbourhood.  One of the Roman pigs of lead found hereabouts, impressed with the name of the Emperor “Domitian,” bore also the word “Brig,” which was supposed to be a contraction of Brigantes.  A number of Roman coins had also been discovered, but none of them of a later date than the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 139, the oldest being one of Nero, A.D. 54-68.

[Illustration:  THE OLD PARISH CHURCH, PATELEY BRIDGE.]

Previous to the fourteenth century the River Nidd was crossed by means of a paved ford, and this might originally have been paved by the Romans, who probably had a ford across the river where Pateley Bridge now stands for the safe conveyance of the bars of lead from the Greenhow mines, to which the town owed its importance, down to the beginning of the nineteenth century.  But though it could boast a Saturday market dating from the time of Edward II, it was now considered a quiet and somewhat sleepy town.