“Behold Upleatham, slop’d with graceful ease,
Hanging enraptur’d o’er the winding Tees”—
and the breeze makes merry among the branches that overhang us on both sides till a grand fragment of a ruin appears in sight—the tall east window of a once magnificent Priory—rising stately in decay from amidst the verdure of a fertile valley, and we enter the small market-town of Guisborough.
Having refreshed myself at The Buck, I took an evening stroll, not a little surprised at the changes which the place had undergone since I once saw it. Then it had the homely aspect of a village, and scarce a sound would you hear after nine at night in its long wide street: now at both ends new houses intrude on the fields and hedgerows, the side lanes have grown into streets lit by gas and watched by policemen. Tippling iron-diggers disturb the night with noisy shouts when sober folk are a-bed, and the old honest look has disappeared for ever. In the olden time it was said, “The inhabitants of this place are observed by travellers to be very civil and well bred, cleanly in dressing their diet, and very decent in their houses.” The old hall is gone, but the gardens remain: you see the ample walnut-trees and the primeval yew behind the wall on your way to the churchyard. Seven centuries have rolled away since that Norman gateway was built, and it looks strong enough to stand another seven. Under the shadow of those trees was a burial-place of the monks: now the shadow falls on mutilated statues and other sculptured relics, and on the tomb of Robert Brus, one of the claimants of the Scottish throne and founder of the abbey, who was buried here in 1294. Even in decay it is an admirable specimen of ancient art.
From the meadow adjoining the churchyard you get a good view of the great east window, or rather of the empty arch which the window once filled; and looking at its noble dimensions, supported by buttresses, flanked by the windows of the aisles, and still adorned with crumbling finials, you will easily believe what is recorded of Guisborough Priory—that it was the richest in Yorkshire. It was dedicated to St. Augustine, and when the sacred edifice stood erect in beauty, the tall spire pointing far upwards, seen miles around, many a weary pilgrim must have invoked a blessing on its munificent founder—a Bruce of whom the Church might well be proud.
Hemingford, whose chronicle of events during the reigns of the first three Edwards contains many curious matters of ecclesiastical history, was a canon of Guisborough; and among the priors we find Bishop Pursglove, him of whom our ancient gossip Izaak makes loving mention. Another name associated with the place is Sir Thomas Chaloner, eminent alike in exercises of the sword, and pen, and statesmanship. It was here in the neighbourhood that he discovered alum, as already mentioned, led thereto by observing that the leaves of the trees about the village were not so dark a green as elsewhere, while the whitish clay soil never froze, and “in a pretty clear night shined and sparkled like glass upon the road-side.”
Skeletons and stone coffins have been dug up from time to time, and reburied in the churchyard. On one occasion the diggers came upon a deposit of silver plate; and from these and other signs the presence of a numerous population on the spot in former days has been inferred. Our quaint friend, who has been more than once quoted, says: “Cleveland hath been wonderfully inhabited more than yt is nowe ... nowe all their lodgings are gone; and the country, as a widow, remayneth mournful.” And among the local traditions, there is the not uncommon one, which hints obscurely at a subterranean passage, leading from the Priory to some place adjacent, within which lay a chest of gold guarded by a raven.
Situate near the foot of a finely-wooded range of hills, the ruin shows effectively with the green heights for a background. More delightful than now must the prospect have been in the early days, and even within the present century, when no great excavations of ironstone left yellow blots in the masses of foliage.
The sun went down while I sauntered about, and when I took my last look at the great east window the ruddy blaze streamed through its lofty space, and as each side grew dark with creeping glooms, filled it with quivering beams whereunto all the glory of glass would be but a mockery.
Guisborough may claim to rank among watering-places, for it has a spa, with appliances for drinking and bathing, down in a romantic nook of Spa Wood, watered by Alumwork beck. The walk thither, and onwards through Waterfall wood to Skelton, is one of the prettiest in the neighbourhood. And on the hill-slopes, Bellman bank—formerly Bellemonde—still claims notice for pleasing scenery. The medicinal properties of the spring were discovered in 1822. The water, which is clear and sparkling, tastes and smells slightly of sulphur and weak alkaline constituents, and is considered beneficial in diseases of the skin and indigestion. And in common with other small towns in Yorkshire, Guisborough has a free grammar-school, which, at least, keeps alive the memory of its founder.
Mine host of The Buck said, as we talked together later in the evening about the changes that had taken place, that although more money came into the town than in years gone by, he did not think that better habits or better morals came in along with it. A similar remark would be made wherever numbers of rude labourers earn high wages. Even in the good old times there was something to complain of. George Fox tells us, concerning his proselytes in Cleveland, that they fell away from their first principles and took to ranting; and at the time of his later visits “they smoked tobacco and drank ale in their meetings, and were grown light and loose.” And John Wesley, on his first visit to Guisborough, in 1761, found what was little better than practical heathenism. He preached from a table standing in the market-place, where “there was,” as he writes, “so vehement a stench of stinking fish as was ready to suffocate me.” The people “roared;” but as the zealous apostle of Methodism went on in his sermon they gradually became overawed, and listened in silence. Did their forefathers ever roar when Paulinus preached to them from a mossy rock, or under the shadow of a spreading oak? Wesley, however, made an impression, and followed it up by visits in four subsequent years.