Saturday, March 25, 1837

1837

March

Saturday 25

8

1 5/..

No kiss. Ann in bed an hour before me last night and fast asleep in a few moments, and up before 7 this morning.  Fine morning – Hard frost – Breakfast at 9 25/.. to 10 –

Read a little of Whitaker’s Craven and then had Mr. Wilson, the Landlord – Advised our driving 1st to Barden Tower up one side of valley, and returning along the other , and seeing the lions in the grounds as we returned –

Had Mrs. Wilson – Ann inquired for a footman and I for a labourer – I would give 15/. a week and a cottage rent-free – This, she said, was exactly what the duke of Devonshire gave –

Admired some carved oak picture frames – Mrs. Wilson recommended the cabinet maker who made them – Mr. Edward Brumfitt of Skipton –

Mr. Harper built (altered, enlarged) the present Inn (Devonshire Arms, Bolton bridge) and had built several cottages for the duke, but nothing else – Was to have made some additions to the duke’s hunting box (a tower with a wing added about 12 years ago – opposite the abbey) and was to have been there a month ago – but he had not been there, and the alterations were given up – Mr. Harper was not the architect of the Ice house –

Some while in Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s sitting room after the car drove to the door – Mrs. Wilson wishing to shew me another picture frame – It seems Mr. Wilson lived and travelled with the late Lord Ribblesdale – Went with him to see the Louvre after 1st fall of Napoleon – Lord Ribblesdale, then Mr. Lister, was at the Louvre copying pictures every day – Was in France when Napoleon returned from Elba – Mr. Wilson asked if I was any relation – No! Hardly – Of the same family – 14th cousin –

The mention of Mr. Harper brought on my saying he was building me a large hotel at Halifax.  Mr. and Mrs. W- Wilson seemed to know all about it – Somehow mentioned Mr. Carr as keeping a very gambling house – I merely answered I had been told so, without making any further comment –

Said I was anxious for a highly respectable tenant who would do credit to himself and the hotel and the town – Mr. Wilson seemed to think the hotel would require a fortune to furnish it –

Ann and I and our 2 servants off in the one-horse car at 11 50/.. – Cold, but too well cloaked up to suffer from the cold – Drove past the abbey and along the outskirts of the grounds along the high ground to Barden Tower in 50 minutes and alighted at 12 40/.. and sauntered about the ruin 20 minutes – Too houselike – and too modern (about 2 centuries since its last and great repair by the Countess Anne of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery) to be either very interesting or very picturesque –

Then crossed the wharf over a little stone bridge, and drove up the hill on the other side to within  about 2 miles from the village of Appletreewick, for the purpose of seeing higher up the river and pretty valley – Pretty from the forms of its limestone hills – Not much wood, and that chiefly plantations of larch with a little scotch pine – On inquiring why the larch was peeled, was told that the bark was sold to the tanners and was of 1/2 the value of oak bark – The 2 men who answered my inquiry seemed to be farmers, and were very civil –

At 1 40/.. (just an hour from Barden Tower), turned back, and at 2 40/.. stopped near the waterfall in the deer-park – Had luncheon in the car in 1/4 hour and at 2 55/.., alighted – Walked up to the fall, very pretty;  sauntered about and walked up to a lesser fall at some little distance up the glen, covered with boulderstone from the adjoining hills – A sort of little chaos –

At 3 50/.., in the car again, and drove to the strid at which we alighted at 4 20/.. (In returning from the Appletreewick road, passed a little round farm-stack (common brackens), hay, said the drivers, for the Scotch cattle  – 1st time I ever observed peeled larches – or bracken-hay in England) –

At the Strid at 4 20/.. – the fall just about it reminded me, en petit, of the Rhine at Schaffhausen – It was just into the vortex that Miss Powley (spelt according to the driver’s pronunciation) fell and was drowned about 6 years ago – her body not found till the following day – about 50 or 60 to 100 yards below – Loitered here 1/4 hour –

Drove off at 4 35/.. – Alighted for a minute or 2 en passant at the Hartington Seat, from which is the most beautiful point of view – a perfect picture of ruined abbey wood and black scar and mountain streams (an Alpine bach or little torrent) tumbling down a steep of 2 or 3 hundred feet ? and several beautiful reaches of the river (Wharfe) –

At the abbey at 5 – The nave preserved and used as a church – Sent for the woman who keeps the key – Nothing particular worth seeing in the church – Put down in the visitor’s book in the vestry ‘Mrs. Lister and Miss Walker Shibden Hall’ – The present west entrance doorway to the church very handsome –

The woman shewed us to the Ice-house – She sensibly observed that she [thought] the ice never failing was as much owing to the good management of the gardener in well pounding the ice where put in, as to any merit in the icehouse itself –

Home in 10 minutes at 5 3/4 – Had it been quite dry, should have walked back along the ‘home terrace,’ the high right bank of the river – But dinner ordered at 6, and glad to get back as fast as we could after a day very agreeably spent – much more so than we had expected from the coldness of the weather and the remains of snow still whitening all the surrounding country –

Dinner at 6 20/.. – Sat comfortably after it by our good fire which had since morning warmed the room and made it tolerably comfortable – We could now have staid here another [night] very willingly, but the horses were ordered to be here at 7 this evening and our beds and rooms in readiness for us at Skipton – Our present quarters not cheap – but the cooking very fair, and had we staid longer, we should have warmed our rooms and been very comfortable –

Had Mrs. Wilson – Said we would come again if we could to sketch, but not certain – Left my address in my hope of Mr. Wilson’s hearing of a labourer to suit me – Promised to write 2 or 3 days beforehand if we came again –

Off from the Devonshire Arms Bolton Bridge at 8 1/4 and alighted at the Devonshire Hotel Skipton at 9 20/..  Tea and sat reading Whitaker till 11 1/2.  Fine day –

 

WYAS Finding Number SH:7/ML/E/20/0038