Barden Tower and the Priest's House

On the valley side just above Barden Bridge sits Barden Tower. It was a hunting lodge and administrative centre, when hunting deer and wild boar was a sport popular with noblemen and vast tracts of hunting forest were owned by local lords. It was rebuilt as a residence in the 15th century, by Henry Clifford, who preferred it to his family seat at Skipton Castle. The adjacent Priest House was built in 1515.

The tower was restored by Lady Anne Clifford in the late 1600s, but after her death it was no longer used. Decay accelerated in the 18th century when lead and timber from the roof disappeared. For a full account of its interesting history, see HERE. Nowadays, the crumbling walls are all that remain, and you cannot go inside as it's unsafe. You can, however, see the remains of fireplaces and the various floor levels inside. It is now in the care of the Dukes of Devonshire, who own the Bolton Abbey Estate.

The Priest's House (bottom photo) has recently been fully restored as a romantic venue for weddings and events. See HERE.

Enjoying 'the summer' at Barden

We had a few days of really beautiful summery weather at the end of February, with record temperatures around 18-20 C, which is at least 10 degrees above our usual February high. It was lovely, if rather worrying. A late burst of summer is known as an Indian summer, so I wonder what an early burst should be?

I tried to make the most of it. One day I enjoyed a lovely stroll along the River Wharfe beyond Bolton Abbey, from Barden Bridge to The Strid gorge and back again. Such blue skies! I took several photos and am really undecided which to post... so you can have them all!

Barden Bridge itself is interesting and very old, built in the late 1600s. It is only about 10 feet wide, and is steeply humped in the middle, so modern cars have to be careful crossing it. The triangular cutwaters are intended to strengthen it against floodwaters (though it has been damaged several times). They provide useful pedestrian refuges as it is quite a long, narrow bridge to be stranded on when a vehicle comes along.

The warm weather was certainly bringing on the buds. The pussy willow looked very pretty against the blue water. I watched a red kite soaring on the thermals too.

Bolton Abbey

Addingham Walk

Climbing over a steep stile in a stone wall, at the highest point of my walk, I was quite suddenly treated to this stunning panorama of the Wharfe valley, with the ancient half-ruin of Bolton Abbey (see HERE) at its heart. 

This is where my long lens comes in useful, picking out some of the detail of the scene: 

Bolton Bridge, both the old and new crossings, looks pretty from this vantage point.

You can pick out Bolton Abbey itself, which has one end in ruins since the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. The other end of the nave was spared and allowed to continue as a church because it was used for worship by local people as well as the monks. It is still used to this day (see HERE).

'Home'

One last view from the Bolton Abbey estate, looking over the wall that separates woodland (stately beech trees, in this area) from pasture. Such a view, with its gentle colours and snaking drystone walls simply says 'home' for me, like nowhere else.

Broad and narrow

The River Wharfe, having churned through the narrow Strid, resumes a broader, shallower and more leisurely course, round a small island, then down past the Cavendish Pavilion and on to Bolton Abbey itself.

Half a mile upstream, it's a different story. The Strid is a slender chasm, only a few metres wide but deeper than than two double decker buses! The mighty River Wharfe is channelled through it at a wild speed, causing fierce undercurrents that have sucked unwary people - those fools who thought to try to leap the gap and those who unfortunately lost their footing on the slippery rocks - to their deaths. When the trees have no leaves, you can get quite a good view of it from the high-level path on the eastern bank of the river. It's hard to believe the two views are the same river!

Bolton Abbey's birds

The woods around the river at Bolton Abbey are an ancient remnant of sessile oak trees and are managed as an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest). They abound in wildlife (most of which is invisible on a day at half-term when the woods are full of families having a great time and a film crew is working!) The birds are nurtured, with nest boxes provided and some food supplied during the winter. I managed to snap this nuthatch. They usually dart round to the far side of tree trunks, out of camera sight, but this one was getting interested in a pile of seeds left near a bench. 

There are a few Mandarin ducks among the mallards on the river. They're showy and colourful, a species introduced to the UK from China but now established and breeding. 

Who can resist a robin, especially one that hops closer and closer in the hope of some tasty morsels? This one would have looked better photographed from ground level but I didn't dare move to crouch down or it would surely have flown away. 

Path to the tower

The view from the aqueduct bridge up the River Wharfe to Barden Tower is lovely, I think. Barden Tower is the romantic ruin of a 15th century hunting lodge, part of the Bolton Abbey estate.

Disguises

The aqueduct bridge at Bolton Abbey, where they were doing the filming, is cunningly disguised to act as a footbridge over the river. A disguise that would be appreciated by the Gunpowder plotters, for sure... In fact the castellations hide pipes that carry water from the large reservoirs of Upper Nidderdale to reservoirs lower down that provide the water supply for West Yorkshire's towns and cities. Someone has also thought fit to disguise a hard stone seat as a sofa, too!

If you go down to the woods today...

In between Storm Doris and the next band of rain and wind, we had one lovely, sunny, springlike day, when it seemed criminal to stay at home. So off I tootled, for a walk in the woods alongside the river at Bolton Abbey. It was all so beautiful and I enjoyed the way the views opened out between the trees as the path rose and fell. I walked from the Cavendish Pavilion as far as the aqueduct bridge and back past the Strid, almost four miles of easy walking. When I was nearing the bridge my eye was caught by a group of people on the opposite bank, which I assumed to be a large group of hikers. A little further on and I was politely prevented, by a security guard, from walking further.

It turned out that the BBC were filming a new historical drama, to be screened this autumn.  (My life these days seems to involve an awful lot of film crews!! ) Called 'Gunpowder', the drama is about the failed plot in 1605 to oust King James I. It stars Kit Harington (of 'Game of Thrones'), Liv Tyler, Mark Gatiss and Peter Mullan.

From where I was standing waiting I couldn't really see much, but they were using a drone to film a scene on the bridge. They did a few takes and then all the actors walked back along the path. I've no idea who they were, from that distance, but there are swords, capes, ruffs and plentiful beards involved! I'm sure it'll be explosive! 

(PS: Having watched the drama, I can now identify some of the cast below as Shaun Dooley [Sir William Wade], Mark Gatiss [Sir Robert Cecil] in the green hat, and a couple of actors playing the Spanish lords.)

Eventually, they let me continue my walk. A little further on they were packing up lights, cameras and one of those iconic clapperboards. Then all retreated to their little camp in the woods. It amazes me how much effort goes in to making films and TV shows and how many people it involves. They'd even placed more clumps of grass on the bridge, for effect. Further on, there was a huge encampment of film-related caravans and trucks in one of the Bolton Abbey car parks, so they must be doing a good deal of filming in the area. 

Birch trees

Trees in Strid Wood at Bolton Abbey. The woodland is very ancient and full of sessile oaks but there are a few areas of younger trees like these birches. I think birches are very photogenic and I liked the darker trunk next to the light one. 

The Strid

The River Wharfe winds its languid way through the Bolton Abbey estate, a broad and shallow river with a few areas of scree and rock outcrop where it tumbles into gentle waterfalls and rapids. There is, however, one unusual natural feature known as The Strid. Here the channel narrows dramatically, from about forty feet wide to just four feet, forcing the water through at great pressure, churning through the rocks and twisting through a series of bends. The noise is deafening. No-one knows just how deep the channel is, as the force of the current makes it impossible to fathom and there are probably subterranean channels under the rock too. It has drawn many visitors, since Victorian times when a railway was established to bring day trippers to Bolton Abbey from the nearby cities. Some of those visitors are tempted to try to leap the gorge. A few have succeeded but, of those who failed, none have survived and in some cases their bodies have never been found. The most recent fatalities were in 1998 when a couple on honeymoon were swept away in a flash flood. There are inevitably many folk tales linked to the area. A spectral white horse is said to rise from the river to claim its victims.

Barden Bridge

I had a day out with some friends recently, walking alongside the River Wharfe on the Bolton Abbey estate. It was the 60th birthday of one of my friends so we had a picnic, complete with prosecco, resulting in quite a merry meander back! Thankfully the rain held off, although it was a rather dull and cloudy day. We had planned to hike up Simon's Seat, a rocky outcrop that overlooks the estate. What we had not realised is that, for some strange reason, dogs (even on leads) are banned from that walk. As we had two with us, that made it a no-go area. It seemed rather an unnecessary restriction but it is private land belonging to the Duke of Devonshire and (like Sir Titus Salt in Saltaire) the gentry seem to like 'rules'. So we walked along the riverside path from the Cavendish Pavilion tearoom to Barden Bridge (shown above) and back.

Posforth Gill and the Valley of Desolation

I spent absolutely ages trying to find this waterfall!  Happily, it was worth the effort. The Bolton Abbey estate covers a large area with varied scenery. There is a walk - known as the Valley of Desolation - which I'd never done before. It follows a little stream (Posforth Gill) up the valley and eventually on to Barden Fell and the hill known as Simon's Seat. The Gill flows over this lip in a rather attractive waterfall. Whatever desolation there once was (caused apparently by a huge storm in 1826) has long since been repaired by Mother Nature.

To find the falls, you had to take a steep path down to the left off the main footpath but I missed the turn and went on upwards, nearly making it onto Simon's Seat, before I realised my error. Never mind, it was a good walk and good to get the exercise. I do a lot of walking but mostly along fairly flat paths (like the canal towpath) so striding up a hill for a change is good for my heart and lungs!

The Priory Church

The Priory Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert at Bolton Abbey is a thriving church in the (newly formed) Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales. One of it's loveliest features, in my view, is the painted wall (Victorian), which replaces what would have been the rood screen separating the nave from the now ruined chancel which lies beyond the wall. It has plants and symbols with a biblical and Christian meaning: lilies, barley, olives, roses and palms among them. I like it but apparently Queen Mary did not (!) and it was covered for some time with a tapestry.

There are also some lovely Pugin stained glass windows from the 19th century set into the 13th century lancet windows. Augustus Pugin was the architect of much of the Palace of Westminster in London (our Houses of Parliament).

Hey diddle diddle

The mist was still hanging over the hills by the time I arrived at Bolton Abbey, a very popular beauty spot in Wharfedale, on an estate owned by the Duke of Devonshire. The river meanders around the partially ruined Augustinian Priory, stripped of its assets during the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, by order of Henry VIII. The nave survives as a church to this day, because it was successfully argued by Prior Moone, the last Prior, that it was a place of worship for the local community. Interestingly, the nursery rhyme "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle" is reputed to be about a dispute Prior Moone had with a local farmer over a cow. For that story, see here (and scroll down the page).

Bolton Priory ruins

Bolton Priory, like so many of England's once proud monasteries, met a sad end as a result of King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, when he decided to break from Rome and establish himself as Supreme Head of the Church in England. However, the Augustinian monks were priests with pastoral responsibilities for the surrounding area and because there was no other church they were allowed to keep the western half of the nave of the Priory as a parish church. Most of the rest of the abbey was stripped for its useable stone and the only part left standing is the eastern nave, roofless but with its walls still largely intact. Like so many of our other ruined abbeys, the gothic ruin in a lush, green valley beside the river has a rather romantic appeal.

Although the mellow stone of Bolton Priory is a beautiful honeyed colour, I quite like this mono conversion.

Bolton Abbey estate

A little closer to our destination and it becomes clearer that we're walking by the River Wharfe, in the Duke of Devonshire's Bolton Abbey estate, heading for Bolton Priory.  It's a well-known beauty spot, only about half an hour's drive from Saltaire, just inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Once an Augustinian monastery and dating back to the 12th century, the Priory is partially ruined. Half of the nave is still roofed and is used as a parish church. Very beautiful inside and in a wonderful setting, it is popular for weddings.

A warm, summer evening is perhaps the best time to visit. It gets very crowded during the day but by the time I arrived many people had packed up their picnics and gone home. The stepping stones across the river make it popular with children, though parts of the river can be extremely dangerous.