British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car / Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland

by Thos. D. Murphy

The day, which had so far been fine, soon began to turn cold—one of those sudden and disagreeable changes that come in England and Scotland in the very midst of summertime, an experience that happens so often that one can not wonder at Byron's complaint of the English winter, "closing in July to re-commence in August." At no time in the summer were we able to dispense for any length of time with heavy wraps and robes while on the road. From Richmond we hastened away over a fine and nearly straight road to Ripon, whose chief attraction is its cathedral. Speaking of cathedrals again, I might remark that our tour took us to every one of these, with one exception—in England and Scotland, about thirty in all—and the exception, Beverly Minster, is but newly created and relatively of lesser importance.

Ripon is one of the smaller cathedrals and of less importance in historical associations. It occupies a magnificent site, crowning a hill rising in the very center of the town, and from a distance gives the impression of being larger than it really is. It presents a somewhat unfinished aspect with its three low, square-topped towers, once surmounted by great wooden spires, which became unsafe and were taken down, never to be replaced. These must have added wonderfully to the dignity and proper proportion of the church.

Just outside Ripon lies Fountains Abbey, undoubtedly the most striking and best preserved ecclesiastical ruin in England. It is on the estate of the Marquis of Ripon, adjoining the town, and this nobleman takes great pride in the preservation of the abbey. The great park, which also surrounds his residence, is thrown open every day and one has full liberty to go about it at pleasure. It is a popular resort, and on the day of our visit the number of people passing through the gate exceeded five hundred. The gatekeeper assured us that a thousand visitors on a single day was not an uncommon occurrence. The abbey stands in a wooded valley on the margin of a charming little river, and underneath and around the ruin is a lawn whose green loveliness is such as can be found in England alone. There is no room in this record for the description of such a well known place or for its story. The one feature which impressed us most, and which is one of the finest specimens of Norman architecture in England, is the great cellarium, where the monks stored their wine in the good old days. The vaulted roof of this vast apartment, several hundred feet in length, is in perfect condition and shows how substantially the structure must have been built Fountains Abbey shared the fate of its contemporaries at the hand of Henry VIII, who drove the monks from its shelter, confiscating their property and revenues. It was growing late when we left Ripon for York, but the road was perfect and we had no trouble in covering the twenty miles or more in about an hour. We were soon made comfortable at the Station Hotel in York, one of the oldest and most interesting of the larger cities.

The following day being Sunday, we availed ourselves of the opportunity of attending services at the Minster. The splendid music of the great organ was enough to atone for the long dreary chant of the litany, and the glory of the ancient windows, breaking the gloom of the church with a thousand shafts of softened light, was in itself an inspiration more than any sermon—at least to us, to whom these things had the charm of the unusual.

York Minster, with the exception of St. Paul's in London, is the largest cathedral in England and contests with Canterbury for first place in ecclesiastical importance. Its greatest glory is its windows, which are by far the finest of any in England. Many of them date back to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, and when one contemplates their subdued beauty it is easy to understand why stained-glass making is now reckoned one of the lost arts. These windows escaped numerous vicissitudes which imperiled the cathedral, among them the disastrous fires which nearly destroyed it on two occasions within the last century. The most remarkable of them all is the "Five Sisters" at the end of the nave, a group of five slender, softly-toned windows of imposing height. The numerous monuments scattered throughout the church are of little interest to the American visitor. We were surprised at the small audiences which we found at the cathedrals where we attended services. A mere corner is large enough to care for the congregations, the vast body of the church being seldom used except on state occasions. Though York is a city of seventy-five thousand population, I think there were not more than four or five hundred people in attendance, though the day was exceptionally fine.

There are numerous places within easy reach of York which one should not miss. A sixty-mile trip during three or four hours of the afternoon gave us the opportunity of seeing two abbey ruins, Helmsley Castle and Laurence Sterne's cottage at Coxwold. Our route led over a series of steep hills almost due north to Helmsley, a town with unbroken traditions from the time of the Conqueror. Its ancient castle surrendered to Fairfax with the agreement that "it be absolutely demolished and that no garrison hereafter be kept by either party." So well was this provision carried out that only a ragged fragment remains of the once impregnable fortress, which has an added interest from its connection with Scott's story, "The Fortunes of Nigel"

Two miles from Helmsley is Rievaulx Abbey, situated in a deep, secluded valley, and the narrow byway leading to the ruin was so steep and rough that we left the car and walked down the hill. A small village nestles in the valley, a quiet, out-of-the-way little place whose thatched cottages were surrounded by a riot of old-fashioned flowers and their walls dashed with the rich color of the bloom-laden rose vines. Back of the village, in lonely grandeur, stands the abbey, still imposing despite decay and neglect. Just in front of it is the cottage of the old custodian, who seemed considerably troubled by our application to visit the ruins. He said that the place was not open on Sunday and gave us to understand that he had conscientious scruples against admitting anyone on that day. The hint of a fee overcame his scruples to such an extent that he intimated that the gates were not locked anyway and if we desired to go through them he did not know of anything that would prevent us. We wandered about in the shadows of the high but crumbling walls, whose extent gave a strong impression of the original glory of the place, and one may well believe the statement that, at the time of the Dissolution, Rievaulx was one of the largest as well as richest of the English abbeys. The old keeper was awaiting us at the gateway and his conscientious scruples were again awakened when we asked him for a few post-card pictures. He amiably intimated his own willingness to accommodate us, but said he was afraid that the "old woman" (his wife) wouldn't allow it, but he would find out. He returned after a short interview in the cottage and said that there were some pictures on a table in the front room and if we would go in and select what we wanted and leave the money for them it would be all right.

On our return from Helmsley, we noticed a byway leading across the moorland with a sign-board pointing the way "to Coxwold." We were reminded that in this out-of-the-way village Laurence Sterne, "the father of the English novel," had lived many years and that his cottage and church might still be seen. A narrow road led sharply from the beautiful Yorkshire farm lands, through which we had been traveling, its fields almost ready for the harvest, into a lonely moor almost as brown and bare as our own western sagebrush country. It was on this unfrequented road that we encountered the most dangerous hill we passed over during our trip, and the road descending it was a reminder of some of the worst in our native country. They called it "the bank," and the story of its terrors to motorists, told us by a Helmsley villager, was in no wise an exaggeration. It illustrates the risk often attending a digression into byroads not listed in the road-book, for England is a country of many hilly sections. I had read only a few days before of the wreck of a large car in Derbyshire where the driver lost control of his machine on a gradient of one in three. The car dashed over the embankment, demolishing many yards of stone wall and coming to rest in a valley hundreds of feet beneath. And this was only one of several similar cases. Fortunately, we had only the descent to make. The bank dropped off the edge of the moorland into a lovely and fertile valley, where, quite unexpectedly, we came upon Bylands Abbey, the rival of Rievaulx, but far more fallen into decay. It stood alone in the midst of the wide valley; no caretaker hindered our steps to its precincts and no effort had been made to prop its crumbling walls or to stay the green ruin creeping over it. The fragment of its great eastern window, still standing, was its most imposing feature and showed that it had been a church of no mean architectural pretension. The locality, it would seem, was well supplied with abbeys, for Rievaulx is less than ten miles away, but we learned that Bylands was founded by monks from the former brotherhood and also from Furness Abbey in Lancashire. In the good old days it seems to have been a common thing when the monks became dissatisfied with the establishment to which they were attached for the dissenters to start a rival abbey just over the way.

Coxwold is a sleepy village undisturbed by modern progress, its thatched cottages straggling up the crooked street that leads to the hilltop, crowned by the hoary church whose tall, massive octagonal tower dominates the surrounding country. It seems out of all proportion to the poverty-stricken, ragged-looking little village on the hillside, but this is not at all an uncommon impression one will have of the churches in small English towns. Across the road from the church is the old-time vicarage, reposing in the shade of towering elms, and we found no difficulty whatever in gaining admission to "Shandy Hall," as it is now called. We were shown the little room not more than nine feet square where Sterne, when vicar, wrote his greatest book, "Tristram Shandy." The kitchen is still in its original condition, with its rough-beamed ceiling and huge fireplace. Like most English cottages, the walls were covered with climbing roses and creepers and there was the usual flower-garden in the rear. The tenants were evidently used to visitors, and though they refused any gratuity, our attention was called to a box near the door which was labeled, "For the benefit of Wesleyan Missions."