Swaledale - the ‘most beautiful part of England’

PLENTY of folk have lost their hearts to Swaledale.

Alf Wight – better known to fans around the world as James Herriot – once described it as 'the most beautiful part of England'. Writing in 1909, the perhaps appropriately named Edmund Bogg gave it as his opinion that "those who love wild and desolate scenery will find this remote land a region of strange charm, ever full of new points of interest."

In his1952 book Fair North Riding, meanwhile, Alfred Brown brought a touch more poetry to his description.

"Of all the great dales, Swaledale seems to come nearest to one's idea of a pure, unsullied dale," he wrote. "The scenery of Upper Swaledale, with its grey limestone crags and great gills, is of the kind that sets the pulses dancing for those who revel in the high solitudes of the Pennines."

Chris Park, in his new book about this most beautiful of dales, contents himself with remarking that: "I regard myself as very fortunate to have been born there and to be able to call it home."

Richmond-born Chris continues to call Swaledale home despite having lived and worked in 'exile' – in Lancaster of all places – for more than three decades.

In his introduction to Swaledale & Richmond: The Story of a Dale the author admits that nowhere is perfect – not even this dale he loves so well.

"In truth it has always been a remote and inaccessible place," he writes. "It remains a harsh and challenging environment to cope with and offers limited local employment and few prospects for those seeking fame and fortune.

"It is a place from which in recent generations the young have often wanted to escape.Yet ... I still personally find Swaledale a thoroughly enchanting place."

And so it is. Swaledale is one of the most northerly of the Yorkshire dales: one which, like so many others, owes its scenery to glaciation. The glacier which created Swaledale wasn't deep enough or powerful enough to carve out the sort of U-shaped valley typical of many glaciated upland areas, Chris writes. "But it did trim the valley sides and created steep cliffs in some places."

The River Swale, after which the dale is named, runs for 70 miles from its source in the Pennines above Keld before it joins the Ure.

In his book, Chris focuses only on the first 20 miles of the river's journey, down to Richmond.

But in that stretch the dale includes within its broad and rugged acres some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful countryside in God's Own County.

There are landscapes to make the heart soar: such as the hay meadows interlaced with dry stone walls and dotted with stone barns on the valley floor in upper Swaledale and at Gunnerside bottoms; Gunnerside itself nestled against a backdrop of high moors as seen from Gunnerside New Bridge; Dale Head looking west from Keld up Birkdale to High Seat, the rich green pasture glowing a buttery green-gold in the sunshine.

But this has always been a working dale, and that legacy is inprinted everywhere on the landscape too: in the hay fields, the drystone walls, the sheep pens - and, of course, the lead mines, the result of rich veins of lead in 200 million-year-old Yoredale limestone and sandstone rocks.

The mines are found mainly on the north side of the dale, between Keld and Hurst, and across central Arkengarthdale. Miners gave them some curious names: Old Gang, Beldi Hill, Beezy Mines, Allmaker's Shaft.

Mines around Hurst and above Fremington Edge were worked by the Romans, Chris notes –and by its peak in the early 19th century the lead mining industry in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale was producing up to 5,500 tons of lead a year and employing thousands of workers.

Swaledale lead was costly to extract, however - and when the local industry collapsed at the end of the 19th century it triggered a mass exodus of miners and their families, leading to economic decline and stagnation which was to persist for decades, Chris writes.

Some miners, however, stayed put. Chris quotes James Herriot again, from James Herriot's Yorkshire, on how many former miners stayed "and in Swaledale became smallholders and sheep-farmers with a few cows.They bred the tough little horned Swaledale sheep who can live on the bleak uplands where others would die. They are like their owners, the dalesmen: spare, durable and eminently well-respected."

In 200 pages Chris's book covers the history of the dale and its people, and takes the armchair traveller on a journey of exploration along the glorious length of Swaledale, from the source of the River Swale to Richmond – not forgetting a diversion into Arkengarthdale.

The book is sumptuously illustrated with beautiful photographs, and dotted with quotations from those who know and love this part of the world. It is bound to make anyone who reads it want to discover this beautiful dale afresh.

Swaledale & Richmond: The Story Of A Dale by Chris Park is published by Palatine, priced £14.99.