XXXV
Leaving Doncaster and its racing and coaching memories behind, we come out upon the open road again by Frenchgate, past the unprepossessing “Volunteer” inn, in whose yard Mendoza and Humphries brought off their prize-fight in 1790; past Marshgate and over the dirty Don to a parting of the ways. To the left goes the Ferrybridge, Wetherby, and Boroughbridge route to the North; to the right, that by way of Selby and York. Both fall into one again at Northallerton; both claim to be the true Great North Road; and both were largely travelled, so that we shall have to pay attention to either. In the first instance, we will go via York, the mail-route in later coaching days, and as flat and uninteresting a road, so far as the cathedral city, as it is possible to imagine. Beginning with the suburban village of Bentley, with its ugly new cottages and handsome new church, it continues, with ruts and loose stones as its chief features, to Askerne, passing through lonely woods and past pools and lakes, with a stray grouse or so, and astonished hares and rabbits, as the sole witnesses of the explorer’s progress in these deserted ways. Off to the right-hand, two miles or so away, goes the Great Northern Railway, one of the causes of this solitude, to meet the North Eastern at Shaftholme Junction, where, as the chairman said, many years ago, the Great Northern ends, ingloriously, “in a ploughed field.”
Askerne, in a situation of great natural beauty, amidst limestone rocks and lakes, and with the advantage of possessing medicinal springs, has been, like most Yorkshire villages, made hideous by its houses and cottages, inconceivably ugly to those who have not seen what abominable places Yorkshire folk are capable of building and living in. Askerne’s fame as what its inhabitants call a “spawing place” has not spread of late, but its old pump-room and its lake are the resorts of York and Doncaster’s trippers in summer-time, and those holiday-makers derive just as much health from rowing in pleasure-boats on the lake as did their forefathers, who, a hundred years ago, quaffed its evil-tasting sulphurous waters.
Thus Askerne. Between it and Selby, a distance of thirteen miles, the road and the country around are but parts of a flat, watery, treeless, featureless plain, its negative qualities tempered by the frankly mean and ugly villages on the way, and criss-crossed by railways, sluggish rivers, and unlovely canals. So utterly without interest is the road, that a crude girder-bridge or a gaunt and forbidding flour-mill remain vividly impressed upon the mental retina for lack of any other outstanding objects.
Nearing Selby, the octagonal Perpendicular lantern and spire of Brayton church, curiously imposed upon a Norman tower, attracts attention as much by the relief they give from the deadly dulness just encountered as for their own sake; although they are beautiful and interesting, the lantern having been designed to hold a cresset beacon by which the travellers of the Middle Ages were guided at night across the perilous waste; the spire serving the same office by day. Here, too, the isolated hills of Brayton Burf and Hambleton Hough, three miles away, show prominently, less by reason of their height, which is inconsiderable, than on account of the surrounding levels, which give importance to the slightest rise.
Brayton, which, apart from its beautiful church, is about as miserable a hole as it is possible to find in all Yorkshire (and that is saying a good deal), is a kind of outpost between Selby and these wilds, standing a mile and a half in advance of the town. In that mile and a half the builders are busy erecting a flagrant suburb, so that the traveller presses on, curious to witness the prosperity of Selby itself, arguable from these signs. Even without them, Selby is approached with expectancy, for its abbey is famous, and abbeys imply picturesque towns.
From this point of view Selby is distinctly disappointing. The glorious Abbey, now the parish church, is all, and more than, one expects, and the superlatively cobble-stoned Market-place, painful to walk in, is picturesque to look at; but the rest is an effect of meanness. Mean old houses of no great age; mean new ones; mean and threadbare waterside industries; second-hand clothes-shops, coal-grit, muddy waters and foreshores of the slimy Ouse, shabby rope-walks, and dirty alleys: these are Selby.
You forget all this before that beautiful Abbey, whose imposing west front faces the Market-place, and whose great length is revealed only by degrees. Alike in size and beauty, it shows itself in a long crescendo to the admiring amateur of architecture, who proceeds from the combined loveliness of the Norman, Early English, and Perpendicular west front, to the entrance by the grand Transitional Norman-Early English north porch, thence to the solemn majesty of the purely Norman nave, ending with the light and graceful Decorated choir and Lady Chapel. The upper stage of the tower fell in 1690, and destroyed the south transept.
A very destructive fire occurred in October 1906, and opportunity was afterwards taken of doing a good deal of general restoration.