Mike Laycock visited Rievaulx Terrace for some of the best views in North Yorkshire - and the finest Italian ceiling paintings

An English autumn may be casting its chill over North Yorkshire, but when you enter the Ionic Temple at Rievaulx Terrace near Helmsley, you might well have just wandered in from the Tuscan countryside.

All over the ceiling and cove are painted glorious mythological scenes in fresco... of the lovers Venus and Vulcan, Perseus and Andromeda, and of Aurora, Apollo and the Muses. A host of other mythical figures, from Pan and Cupid, to Jupiter and Europa, are also there, all the scenes painted in brilliant colours.

When Thomas Duncombe, of nearby Duncombe Park, had the "temple" built in about 1760, intending to provide a banqueting house or resting place for guests staying at his house, he certainly spared no expense in getting it decorated. The paintings were the work of an Italian artist, Guiseppe Mattia Borgnis, who was living in England at the time.

The temple, in Palladian style with six giant columns standing proudly at the front, which also features magnificent carved woodwork and fine 18th century furniture, is one of two buildings at either end of a half-mile long grass terrace high above Rievaulx Abbey. The other is the circular Tuscan temple, also built around 1760, complete with dome and colonnade. Inside, the dome is decorated with rich plasterwork coffering again by an Italian plasterer, and there is an 18th century Italian octagonal table.

The serpentine terrace walk was carved in about 1760 out of the wooded hillside to gratify a growing fashion for the informal and picturesque. Every attempt was made in its construction to hide the fact that the landscape was man-made, with woodland above and below.

The gentle walk starts off in the woodland and emerges half-way along the terrace. At various points along the terrace, different picturesque vistas (13 in all) gradually unfold through clearings in the trees. There are magnificent views - all from different angles - of the Cistercian abbey far below. (But there is no direct access down the steep hill to the abbey).

You can also see the River Rye and a stone 15th century packhorse bridge, and there are views across to Ryedale and the Hambleton Hills. When we visited, a brass band was playing down in the abbey grounds, and strains of music wafted delightfully up the hillside to the terrace.

Fact File

Rievaulx Terrace and Temples:

Open daily until October 31, from 10.30am to 5pm. Last admission 4pm.

Admission: Adults: £3, children: £1.50. Family: £7.50

Disabled access: excellent to terrace, (powered self-drive vehicle available) but steps up to temples.

How to get there: Take B1363 from York to Helmsley, and then go two miles along B1257 Stokesley road.

Further information: 01439 798340.