YORKSHIRE GOLD
With tawny woodlands, rolling farmland, friendly villages, stately homes and a magnificent castle, North Yorkshire’s Howardian Hills make a spectacular autumn escape, says
With tawny woodlands, rolling farmland, friendly villages and stately homes, North Yorkshire’s Howardian Hills make the perfect autumn escape.
Yorkshire has been described as England in miniature and, that being the case, I would suggest that this little corner of our largest county is its Cotswolds. When I discovered that exactly the same creamy-coloured, Jurassic limestone underlies both places, it came as no surprise, because bedrock invariably determines landscape.
The Howardian Hills are gentle, rolling and pastoral, with some farmland but more than their fair share of trees, which are, of course, at their multi-hued best in autumn – the dazzling yellow of ash, chestnut and lime leaves complementing the rich russet and golden tones of beeches and oaks. There are no big forests here but some sizeable woods and lots of clumps and copses – dark pillows lying on a rumpled patchwork-quilt landscape.
This sylvan embroidery hides a scattering of honey-coloured hamlets and villages, one of which was my home for a while. This is the quintessential English countryside: sleepy and self-contained, with each village seeming to have an old manor house, a very old church and a big vicarage. It’s not difficult to imagine Miss Marple taking tea with the Colonel in Terrington or cycling past the green in Hovingham.
Most of what is known as the Howardian Hills has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, bounded in the west by the start of the Vale of York, with the rest embraced by two rivers: the Rye to the north and the Derwent to the east and south. Three large family-owned country estates make up much of the central area.
The Wombwells and the Worsleys may be posh but they can’t compete with the Howards – not only does this family have a castle named after them, but also a whole range of hills. Now that’s influence.
BEGINNINGS OF A MASTERPIECE
The Castle Howard Estate sits at the heart of it all, with the house itself still doing what it was always designed to do: dominate and impress. What is, in effect, just one building is the focal point of the whole area, having more attached shops than the nearby villages of Terrington, Welburn, Bulmer, Crambe, Whitwell and Coneysthorpe all put together.
Looking at the magnificent building now, it’s hard to imagine it ever not being there, but in 1699 this little hilltop hosted a small hamlet called Henderskelfe with a church and the ruins of a medieval castle.
The land was owned by Charles Howard, the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, who, along with his ex-soldier and playwright friend John Vanbrugh, had dreams of a magnificent country estate on the site. With no architectural training between them, the scheme could have ended in disaster but, fortunately, their Clerk of Works was
Nicholas Hawksmoor, apprentice to Sir Christopher Wren, and it was probably his design genius that lay behind the resulting spectacular house and park.
Vanbrugh died in 1726 and the 3rd Earl followed in 1738, but their work was continued by two subsequent earls and various architects and landscape gardeners during the remainder of the 18th century.
“THE CASTLE HOWARD ESTATE IS STILL DOING WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED TO DO: DOMINATE AND IMPRESS”
Castle Howard in its entirety – that is, the mansion, park, lakes, temples, mausoleum, iconic ruler-straight road and monuments – was finally complete by the start of the
19th century.
Today, Castle Howard is a multimillionpound business run by a private company, with Howard family members on the board, and business it very definitely is. At the stable courtyard, your first port of call if arriving by car or bus, is a café and five castle shops selling books, gifts, local farm produce, plants and chocolate. Tours and talks, constantly changing exhibitions, events and outdoor concerts are on offer throughout the year, and in 2019, the beautiful grounds hosted Countryfile Live.
These grounds are large enough to escape the crowds and get lost in. Public rights of way thread through the wider estate, allowing you some glimpses of the house, the majestic 20-column mausoleum and the
Palladian splendour of Temple of the Four Winds from a distance. The hamlet of Coneysthorpe, built for estate workers around an oblong green, makes a handy starting point for walks, with scope for getting close up to the house and lake to the south and a fine section of the Centenary Way to the north, which offers choice views of the Vale of Pickering (see Walks, page 28).
Castle Howard has a high season (March to Oct, December) when the house is open, while in other months only the gardens are available. Entrance fees are high, so many people don’t get past the free café and shop area, making do with distant views of the house. Fortunately, those wanting more affordable parkland walking can find it in nearby Yorkshire Arboretum at half the price, or even join in on one of its autumn guided events, such as fungal forays or nature walks in Ray Wood.
THE STATELY AND THE SPIRITUAL
Although they can’t compete with Castle Howard for grandeur and opulence, two other stately homes nestle in the heart of the AONB and both are quirky and charming at the same time. Newburgh
Priory near Coxwold sounds like an
ecclesiastical building but isn’t – it’s the family home of the Wombwells – a Tudor building pinched from the Catholic church after the dissolution of the monasteries.
The Wombwell family mausoleum lies behind the ancient St Michael’s Church in Coxwold, whose vicar in the 1760s was a certain Laurence Sterne, author of groundbreaking novel Tristram Shandy. His house, Shandy
Hall, is now a museum celebrating his life and works and well worth a visit.
My vote for prettiest village in the Howardian Hills would go to Hovingham and this is where the second quirky mansion sits. Hovingham Hall sits on the village green but, bizarrely, faces away from it because it was never meant to be an ostentatious status symbol but a giant riding school and stables, built by a horseobsessed member of the Worsley family in the 1750s. A later Worsley ‘Lord of the Manor’ was similarly obsessed with cricket. He hosted games on the lawn in front of the hall and gave a £5 prize to any visiting batsman who managed to smash a window.
Stately homes are not the only historic buildings to grace the Howardian Hills, as various religious orders have sought out the solitude and beauty of the area in which to
live and worship, particularly on riverside sites. Cistercian monks newly arrived from France in the 12th century were particularly taken with a gorgeous corner of the Rye Valley – Rievaulx in Franca-lingua – and built a beautiful abbey there that bears its original Norman name to this day.
The monks were granted the land to build on by the then Lord of Helmsley, who lived in Helmsley Castle just down the valley.
The atmospheric remains of both these buildings are owned by English Heritage and open to visitors. Between them sits another stately home, Duncombe Park, in whose grounds is the excellent National Centre for Birds of Prey and the serene Helmsley Walled Garden. The genteel town of Helmsley itself is justifiably very popular with visitors.
Downstream from Helmsley, the River Rye meanders lazily past bijou Nunnington Hall and across the Vale of Pickering to join the River Derwent. Another very special riverside church graces the banks of this larger river in Old Malton; the Priory of Saint Mary is the only Gilbertine monastery still used for worship anywhere in the world and the only one that I’ve ever heard of with a built-in medieval barn owl nest-box.
Although not officially in the Howardian Hills, Malton deserves a mention as a proper old-fashioned market town – bustling but with a long and proud history, from its Roman fort right through to a brilliant Second World War museum, Eden Camp. In recent years, the town has reinvented itself as Yorkshire’s food capital, with regular farmers’ markets, an annual food festival and no end of trendy food and drink outlets.
As the Derwent winds on westwards it enters the woodland of Kirkham Gorge where a priory of the same name slumbers – the last of our ancient riverside churches (see Walks, page 28). One of Kirkham Priory’s more bizarre claims to fame is as a clandestine wartime meeting place for Winston Churchill and King George VI.
I wonder if either of those titans of history had any idea where they were for their meeting, which was obviously chosen for its obscurity with safety in mind. Howsham Gorge, and indeed most of the Howardian Hills (its celebrity castle excepted) may be relatively unknown, but it’s a little gem that deserves time to savour its autumn riches.