Aspects of English Towns: Wetherby, Yorkshire
Wetherby is a small market town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, centred in the triangle of Leeds, York and Harrogate. It stands on the twisting, winding River Wharfe and has for centuries been a crossing place and staging post on the A1 Great North Road, the longest numbered road in the United Kingdom at 410 miles. Wetherby is midway between London and Edinburgh, amazingly lying exactly 198 miles from each of the two great capital cities. It is no wonder it became a favourite stopping-off point.
The 2001 Census gave a population of around 11,000, although this is likely to have increased with recent house building.
Appropriately, as the town is noted as a staging post, my wife and I pitched up here one Friday night, uninvited and unannounced. We were looking for a place to stay the night, a stop-over on a long journey from Dorset to the North Yorkshire Moors. We hadn’t booked anywhere. It was that tried and tested strategy of drive and see how far you get and where you end up.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the area was inhabited from at least Neolithic times. Bronze Age finds have also been recorded in villages around Wetherby. The town was also an important Roman settlement and it is believed that it was the Romans who began the tradition of horse racing in this area, racing Arab horses at a place called “Netherby”, a few miles upstream from Wetherby itself.
Historically Wetherby was a part of the “Wapentake of Skyrack”. A “wapentake” was a Norse term for a meeting place, at a crossroads or river, whilst “skyrack” is believed to come from an old English term meaning “shire oak”. Wetherby is mentioned in the Domesday Book as “Wedrebi“, thought to derive from “Wether” (ram farm), or else meaning “settlement on the bend of a river”. Local folklore has it that when heavy snowstorms hit the county, Wetherby does not get as much because the “Weather goes by”, which sounds like the proverbial “old wives’ tail”!
Wetherby Bridge, which spans the River Wharfe, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade II listed structure, dating back over 750 years. As a result of its situation on the Great North Road, a large number of coaching inns were established in Wetherby, and many are still used today by travellers. In the heyday of the coaching era, Wetherby had up to 40 inns and alehouses, the first recorded mail coach arriving here in 1786. Turning up here tired and hungry on a Friday evening, at least we could feel that we were following tradition; always a reassuring feeling.
In 1240 the Knights Templar, one of the most famous of western Christian military orders, were granted by Royal Charter of Henry III the right to hold a market in Wetherby (known then as Werreby). The charter stated the market should be held on a Thursday and a yearly fair was also permitted lasting three days over the day of St. James the Apostle, which falls on 25th July, the feast day when pilgrims visit his grave at Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Engagingly the historic Thursday market is still a fixture of the town’s calendar.
Wetherby’s position on the route north did not always work in its favour as the North of England suffered many raids from the Scots. After the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, Wetherby was burned and many people taken and killed. On 19th February 1408 there was a battle at Bramham Moor, south of Wetherby, in which Henry Percy, the 1st Earl of Northumberland, attempted to unseat King Henry IV, for which he paid with defeat and death.
Wetherby also had a small part to play in the English Civil War in 1644. Before marching to Tadcaster and then to overwhelming victory at Marston Moor, the Parliamentarians spent two days in the town while joining forces with the
History and Hospitality on the Great North Road
Scots. Oliver Cromwell probably spent the night after the battle at the original Half Moon Inn at Collingham, just three miles from Wetherby.
The “Grand Old Duke of York” of nursery rhyme fame is popularly held to have been Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827), the second son of King George III and Commander-in-chief of the British Army during both the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. In 1789 he left his home at Allerton Mauleverer near Wetherby, to be with his troops in the south of England. The “hill” in question is reputed to be the town of Cassel, which rises 570 feet above the otherwise flat terrain of Flanders.
The Duke of Devonshire built The Shambles in 1811 as 10 butchers shops, which were only to open on market day. In 1888 they were converted to a covered market where farmers brought their produce to trade. The present facade was added early in the 20th century.
Wetherby used to be amongst the chattels of the Dukes of Devonshire. This was until 1824 when William George Spencer Cavendish, the 6th Duke, also known as the “Bachelor Duke”, disposed of this particular bit of real estate, selling the town of Wetherby, with the exception of just one house, to finance work at his great family home at Chatsworth. As well as selling off towns, the 6th Duke was also heavily into bananas. The world’s most commercially exploited banana, the “Cavendish”, was named in honour of the Duke, who acquired an early specimen, which he raised in his glasshouse.
There was to be no respite from the exigencies of war even in the 20th century. Many Wetherby men served with either the 5th or 9th West Yorkshire Regiments, who suffered great losses in Flanders during the First World War. A war memorial designed by E. F. Roslyn was dedicated on 22nd April 1922. In 1918 the citizens of Wetherby contributed greatly to support the crew of the minesweeper HMS Wetherby despite hardship and shortages caused by the war.
During the Second World War, RAF Tockwith, to the east of Wetherby, was renamed RAF Marston Moor to avoid confusion with RAF Topcliffe in North Yorkshire. Part of the airfield is now used as a driver training centre and the old control tower is used as the offices. Parts of the runways can still be seen. Heartthrob of the American silver screen, Clark Gable, was stationed at Marston Moor during the Second World War as a member of the USAAF ground staff, with the rank of Captain. Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC was also stationed at Marston Moor for a short while.
Although Wetherby unusually does not have a museum, the town council has for some years commissioned blue plaques to highlight buildings and sites of interest around the town, for example St. James’s Church and the impressive Town Hall.
St James’s is actually not that old, the first stones being laid by a local man, Quentin Rhodes, on 1st April 1839. Rhodes made a significant contribution to the £4,000 initial cost of building St. James’s, raised by subscriptions from local people. The church was completed in 1841 and extended later in the century.
Wetherby Town Hall stands in the centre of the Market Square and replaced the former Court House and Wetherby Prison. It cost £1,300 and was also paid for by public subscription. The Town Hall has had many varied uses. It was famous as the venue for the Wetherby Statute Fairs, held every November, for the hiring of local servants on a day usually observed as a general holiday. In the inter-war years the Town Hall dances were important social events.
There is a significant manufacturing presence both in the town and on a nearby trading estate. The most notable company to emerge from Wetherby is Goldenfry, originally a Wetherby fish and chip shop but now a diversification success, especially with its own brand gravy, where every UK supermarket “own brand” is actually manufactured by Goldenfry. The company employs 300 staff on a modern site opened in 1999.
Interestingly another major employer is none other than the British Library,
which has a document storage centre and reading room at nearby Boston Spa, a town renowned for its fine Georgian architecture.
Considering that a lot of Wetherby folk work in Leeds today, it is a great regret and another classic piece of shortsightedness that the railway in Wetherby was closed in 1964. Had the line to Leeds still been in existence today, it no doubt would have been very popular with commuters, as well as providing a convenient way of getting to the racecourse.
The closure of the cattle market in the 1990s and its replacement by a combination of apartments and a major retail store illustrate the changing face of Wetherby, which is no longer a small rural town but a growing town situated firmly within the Leeds commuter belt. In spite of out-of-town development, the town centre still possesses a number of interesting small shops selling a variety of goods and a selection of teashops and restaurants. There is also a monthly farmers’ market, which started in 2001.
Wetherby does not have much of a sporting claim to fame, except perhaps for its National Hunt racecourse, which has been in use since 1891 and is the only racecourse in Yorkshire which is used exclusively for jump racing.
The River Wharfe provides a focal point for relaxation, with attractive riverside walks and a bandstand, which was built as recently as 2000 by volunteers and public subscription. Also, hidden away in the centre of Wetherby is a peaceful wooded triangle of disused railway line that is enjoyed by walkers, cyclists and wildlife.
Wetherby is the starting point for the Great Yorkshire Bike Ride. This is an annual event held every June. The 70mile ride starts at Wetherby Racecourse and ends on the coast at Filey. The event has raised nearly £2 million for charity since starting in 1984.
Returning to the theme of “passing through” I should relate that following a hearty breakfast we found good reason to delay our departure from this sweet little town and conduct an exploration. A walk through the town to the River Wharfe was rewarded with splendid views from the vicinity of the old bridge. Walking back into the town, the architecture around the Market Square, with the Town Hall and Shambles prominent presented worthwhile photo’ opportunities, and reaching St James’s we were delighted to find the church fair in full swing. The locals were out in force, thronging the stalls on a sunny morning.
If you just need a one-night stop-over as we did, or you need to base yourself somewhere for a few days to explore this part of Yorkshire, then you could do a lot worse than Wetherby. As a lover of tradition I was overjoyed to have bivouacked in a town such as this, following so surely in the footsteps (or carriage wheels) of thousands upon thousands before.