CHAPTER XIII

Concerning the Villages and Scenery of the Forest and Vale of Pickering

  “Wide horizons beckoning, far beyond the hill,
  Little lazy villages, sleeping in the vale,
  Greatness overhead
  The flock’s contented tread
  An’ trample o’ the morning wind adown the open trail.”

H.H.  Bashford.

[Illustration:  The Market Cross at Thornton-le-Dale.

The stocks are quite modern, replacing the old ones which were thrown away when the new ones were made. ]

The scenery of this part of Yorkshire is composed of two strikingly opposite types, that of perfectly wild, uncultivated moorlands broken here and there by wooded dales, and the rich level pasture lands that occupy the once marshy district of the Vale.  The villages, some phases of whose history we have traced, are with a few exceptions scattered along the northern margin of the Vale.  Lastingham, Rosedale Abbey, Levisham, Lockton, and Newton are villages of the moor.  Edstone, Habton, Normanby, Kirby Misperton, and Great Barugh are villages of the Vale; but all the rest occupy an intermediate position on the slopes of the hills.  In general appearance, many of the hamlets are rather similar, the grey stone walls and red tiles offering less opportunity for individual taste than the building materials of the southern counties.  Despite this difficulty, however, each village has a distinct character of its own, and in the cases of Thornton-le-Dale and Brompton, the natural surroundings of hill, sparkling stream, and tall masses of trees make those two villages unique.  A remarkable effect can sometimes be seen by those who are abroad in the early morning from the hills overlooking the wide valley; one is at times able to see across the upper surface of a perfectly level mist through which the isolated hills rising from the low ground appear as islets in a lake, and it requires no effort of the imagination to conjure up the aspect of the valley when the waters of the Derwent were held up by ice in the remote centuries of the Ice Age.  Sometimes in the evening, too, a pleasing impression may be obtained when the church bells of the villages are ringing for evening service.  At the top of Wrelton Cliff, the sound of several peals of bells in the neighbouring villages floats upwards across the broad pastures, and it seems almost as though the whole plain beneath one’s feet were joining in the evening song.  Along the deep ravine of Newton Dale, in all weathers, some of the most varied and richly coloured pictures may be seen.  If one climbs the rough paths that lead up from the woods and meadows by the railway, the most remarkable aspects of the precipitous sides are obtained.  In a book published in 1836,[1] at the time of the opening of the railway between Whitby and Pickering, a series of very delicate steel engravings of the wild scenery of Newton Dale were