SETTLE AND THE INGLETON FELLS
CHAPTER IX
SETTLE AND THE INGLETON FELLS
The track across the moor from Malham Cove to Settle cannot be recommended to anyone at night, owing to the extreme difficulty of keeping to the path without a very great familiarity with every yard of the way, so that when I merely suggested taking that route one wintry night the villagers protested vigorously. I therefore took the road that goes up from Kirby Malham, having borrowed a large hurricane lamp from the ‘Buck’ Inn at Malham. Long before I reached the open moor I was enveloped in a mist that would have made the track quite invisible even where it was most plainly marked, and I blessed the good folk at Malham who had advised me to take the road rather than run the risks of the pot-holes that are a feature of the limestone fells. This moor is on the range of watersheds of Northern England, for it sends streams east and west that find their way into the Irish Sea and German Ocean.
With the swinging lantern throwing vast shadows of my own figure upon the mist, and the stony road under my feet, I at length dropped down the steep descent into Settle, having seen no human being on the road since I left Kirby Malham. Even Settle was almost as lonely, for I had nearly reached a building called The Folly, which is near the middle of the town, before I met the first inhabitant.
In the morning I discovered that The Folly was the most notable house in the town, for its long stone front dates from the time of Charles II., and it is a very fine example of the most elaborate treatment of a house of that size and period to be found in the Craven district. Settle has a most distinctive feature in the possession of Castleberg, a steep limestone hill, densely wooded except at the very top, that rises sharply just behind the market-place. Before the trees were planted there seems to have been a sundial on the side of the hill, the precipitous scar on the top forming the gnomon. No one remembers this curious feature, although a print showing the numbers fixed upon the slope was published in 1778. The market-place has lost its curious old tollbooth, and in its place stands a town hall of good Tudor design. Departed also is much of the charm of the old Shambles that occupy a
SETTLE