A1-The Great North Road
The Great North Road left York through Bootham Bar, once a gateway in the north-west wall of the Roman fort. The present road, called Bootham, follows the course of the Roman road but although Roman road remains have been found in this area there is little evidence beyond the boundaries of modern York. It is tempting to assume that the Great North Road followed a Roman route to Thirsk but the evidence is not there. There is a more definite Roman road from Stamford Bridge to Thirsk, running parallel to, but east of the later route. This was probably the early main road to the North, to Durham and Newcastle, from the Humber crossing at Brough before even the fort at York was established. If the Bootham road did extend northward along the modern route, it would have met the road from Stamford Bridge at Easingwold. This route kept east of the rivers Ouse, Swale and Wiske. The main Roman road North from York to Hadrian's Wall at Corbridge and on to Scotland, left York from the south-east side, crossing the Ouse and keeping west of the river to join the route of the modern A1 near Boroughbridge.
And a bit of local poetry:
When that great forest-nymph, fair Gaultress, on her way
She sees to stand prepared, with garlands fresh and gay,
To deck up Ouse, before herself to York she show.
Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
The AA once described the road from York to Northallerton thus: "The Hambleton Hills are seen to the right on the latter part, but there is no other scenery, and the road is flat" Time to find out what 'no other scenery' looks like.
Just a couple of miles out of York on the Thirsk road, now the A19, lies a village whose 200 year old by-pass was noted a century ago.
“…when reaching Skelton, explore the bye-road at the back of the village. This ‘bye-road’ is the original highway and the ‘back’ of the village street its old front. There is a moral application somewhere in these altered circumstances for those who have the wit, the inclination, and the opportunity to seek. The improved road, a hundred years old, is carried straight and level past the rear of the cottages, and the rugged old one goes serpentining past the front doors, where the entrance to the ‘Bay Horse’ looks out across a little green to where the church stands, the faded old Bay Horse himself wondering where the traffic that used to pass this way has all gone to.” Harper 1901
Well, it's a nice theory but I'm not so sure that Harper got this one right. Skelton is an old village, mentioned in Doomsday and with a typical open field arrangement through the middle ages, sited on dry ground well above the River Ouse. It minded its own business while the Great North Road passed close by, perhaps on a Roman alignment. The main Roman route north from York kept to the west of the Ouse, heading for Aldborough. The Blacksmith's Arms (complete with mounting block) is on the main road and well away from the old village centre. It is early 18th century and the road was turnpiked in 1752. A toll-bar was erected a little south of the inn and though the turnpike ended in 1875 the toll house still stands with a milestone marked London 199 miles. If the Bay Horse was ever a coaching inn it must have involved a little detour. Make the detour yourself, not for the Bay Horse, now long closed, but to visit a pretty village green surrounded by some interesting old cottages and a church, small but perfectly formed, built in 1247 and famed in architectural circles for its excellent preservation of a particular ecclesiastical style.
For hundreds of years, or at least since 1555 and the 'Phillip and Mary Act', the maintenance of roads was a parish responsibility and when the duty was neglected the Parish could be indicted. So it was for the people of Skelton and Shipton in 1606, as the Records of the Thirsk Quarter Sessions recounts: "The inhabitants of Skelton for not duly repairing the King's highway leading from York to Tollerton, viz., from the windmill called Mres Lovell's milne to the furthest part of Skelton, &c., and as to a horse bridge called the Evill-slack Bridge. The inhabitants of Shipton for not repairing the same road from a road called Yorke-way to the gate of the Forest of Galtresse".
But now we find there is evidence that the medieval road north did not follow the present A19 north of Skelton. Here is Anne Screeton, writing in 2001 in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, describing excavations in the village and evidence from aerial photos and a map from 1630:
Aerial photos show rigg-and-furrow was continuous across the present A19 for 200m opposite the village. This shows that, whereas the A19 road by-passed the village in 1630, in earlier times it entered the village itself. It is clear that it joined the village at its south west corner, but we do not know where it emerged. The shape of the A19 north of the village conforms to the curve of the strip in the North Field, showing that it started as a field track lying between the North and Park Fields going as far north as the parish boundary. The A19 road having entered the village may simply have joined the Outgang whence it ran to the York-Crayke road a mile to the east, which was then the main road to the north.
The road described by Screeton as the Outgang runs in the position of the modern Moorlands Road. Stapleton give us two maps, one from 1756 and another, following the Skelton Enclosure Award, of 1806. The older map does not mark a road in the position of Moorlands Road. Rather, there is a track a little to the north, though this may indeed have led out of the east side of the parish to form a route northwards to Crayke and beyond. It seems, however, that the Outgang or Moorlands road was a product of the Enclosure Award.
Here is Skelton Parish Council's Homepage
The next village northwards along the A19 is Shipton, only soon it won't be on the A19 as a by-pass is to be built. ('Soon' means sometime before 2010) They were good on pub names round here. Skelton had a Bay Horse and so did Shipton and Shipton also had a Bay Mare. It's just a couple of miles to Beningbrough Hall, an early 18th century National Trust owned mansion.
North of Shipton the Great North Road seems bereft of villages till Thirsk, but Easingwold, now a mile east of the A19, was once on the old road and prospered from road traffic at least until the railway stopped the coach traffic in about 1840. There was a short section of railway line, the shortest standard gauge railway line in the country, connecting Easingwold to the main North - South line. Passenger trains ceased in 1948 and, just under ten years later, the line closed. The old station was eventually converted into what is now the Station Hotel with its micro-brewery.
Harper, in 1901, does not seem to have liked this area overmuch:
"We have now only occasional trees and an infinity of flat roads, past Shipton village to Tollerton Cross Lanes and Easingwold. This country is dullness personified. The main road is flat and featureless, and the branch roads instinct with a melancholy emptiness that hives in every ditch and commonplace hedgerow. A deadly sameness, a paralysing negation, closes the horizon of this sparsely settled district, depopulated in that visitation of fire and sword when William the Conqueror came, in 1069, and massacred a hundred thousand of those who had dared to withstand him. Their pale ghosts still haunt the route of the Great North Road."
Bradley, however, had not been so haunted in 1889 and he waxes quite lyrical as he rides from York to Easingwold in one sentence:
"In leaving the ancient city of York by Bootham Bar and pursuing our journey due north past the old Manor House at Clifton, with its crumbling Tudor gables, past Rawcliff and Skelton, and through the neat and garden-like village of Shipton, with its glowing red brick and tile cottages, surrounded on every hand by a wealth of bright green foliage, flecked by gorgeous yellow sunflowers and huge clusters of purple clematis, on trembling fields of golden corn, the road once more assuming that widespreading grass-margined appearance so characteristic of the old coaching roads, by Tollerton Lanes and Shire Houses until we turn into the Long Street of Easingwold, and pull up at the door of the New Inn, from whose portals the Royal Mails and the Highflyer used to start in the old days."
Jackson, in his very heavy, two-volume, 'Handbook for Tourists in Yorkshire', of 1891, ( note that's two years after Bradley) gives us this similarly picturesque view of the road out of York:
"The first stage of this journey, for ten miles towards Easingwold, is through the 'ancyent forest of Gaultrees' - the Celts houses - where Celtic power was never anihilated either by Roman or Goth. In leaving the city by Bootham Bar, and pursuing our journey due north past the old Manor House at Clifton, with its crumbling Tudor gables, past Rawcliff and Skelton, and through the neat and garden-like village of Shipton, with its glowing red brick and tile cottages, surrounded on every hand by a wealth of bright green foliage, flecked by gorgeous yellow sunflowers and huge clusters of purple clematis, the road assumes that wide-spreading grass-margined appearance so characteristic of the old coaching roads, until we turn into the Long Street of Easingwold." Very similar in fact.
Tollerton lies just off the road to the west. Hard to imagine now, but this was once deep in the forest of Galtres, with plenty of wild boar. According to that unreliable source, Drunken Barnaby, it was a place of horse racing, as mentioned in his verse from the early 17th century.
"Thence to Towlerton, where those stagers,
Or horses courses run for wagers;
Near to the highway the course is,
Where they ride and run their horses;
But still on our journey went we,
First or last did like content me."
Certainly the old York racecourse lay on Clifton and Rawcliffe Ings, th eflat land between the road and the River Ouse to the west. According to Bradley: Races were held here from 1633 to 1730, when the meeting was postponed on account of the river overflowing its banks and flooding the course. After that time the races were held on Knavesmire. The racecourse still gets flooded occasionally.
The Forest of Galtres was until 1630 a Royal Hunting Forest, since when it has gradually been felled so that the landscape, while by no means treeless, is certainly not wooded. The Swainmote Courts of the Forest were held at Easingwold.
The old road used to have a right angle turn at Tollerton Lanes until the corner was smoothed out around 1980. In the 19th century The Angel Inn stood on what has become the minor road to Tollerton, just west of the A19 junction. Although not a posting inn, that service having been offered at Easingwold, it s likely that trade diminished after the railway took traffic from the road. By 1855 the OS map records a name change to Angel Inn Farm. As a private house it has long had name 'Angel Inn Farm' over the door, but recently this was changed to Angel Inn House. In 2007 it opened as a Bed and Breakfast. There's a milepost at this junction and there's another at the next junction to the north, a place known as Cross Lanes. It's not quite a cross anymore as the side road to Tollerton has been realigned to form a staggered junction though the old road remains to service some houses.
Harper is not too kind about this area, maybe he had had a bad night before passing this way:
We have now only occasional trees and an infinity of flat roads, past Shipton village to Tollerton Cross Lanes and Easingwold. The country is dullness personified. The main road is flat and featureless, and the branch roads instinct with melancholy emptiness that hives in every ditch and commonplace hedgerow. A deadly sameness, a paralysing negation, closes the horizon of this sparsely settled district, depopulated in that visitation of fire and sword when William the Conqueror came, in 1069, and massacred a hundred thousand of those who had dared to withstand him. Their pale ghosts still haunt the route of the Great North Road and afflict it, though more than eight hundred years have flown.
Tollerton is described in Baines' 1823 History and Directory with these words:
The village, situated on the verge of the great forest of Gatres, is supposed to be one of the places where travellers, on entering the forest, paid a certain toll, for which they were furnished with a guide, properly armed, to defend them from the attacks of robbers and wild beasts, with both of which that extensive forest is said to have abounded. At the western extremity of the village runs a small rivulet, which tradition says was once a navigable river, named Carr or Kyle, and, in digging for th foundations of a water mill. in 1815, part of a ship was discovered, at a depth of from ten to twelve feet below the surface.
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Eight miles south of Easingwold |
The new and the old mile markers |
Two miles south of Easingwold |
The A19 leaves the course of the old road for the Easingwold bypass, almost three miles of single carriageway, opened in November 1994. The junctions are now roundabouts but this was an afterthought, after three fatal accidents within the first 12 months at the junction north of Easingwold. There was a local campaign with a petition to parliament, eventually successful.
A first century BC Iron Age settlement of round houses was found during the building of the bypass. Evidence of iron working, animal pens and pottery were found.
There were two coaching inns in Easingwold, The New Inn and the Rose and Crown, both in Long Street, the main road through the town. If you passed through Easingwold without straying from this road you would miss this gem of a town, thinking it quite dull. Turn off and explore. The wide market square with its ancient toll booth, Victorian town hall and Georgian buildings surrounding it, is tucked away to the north-east of Long Street. The Royal Mails and the Highflyer changed horses at the New Inn but the Rose and Crown was the larger business. The coaching trade ended with the opening of the York to Darlington railway in 1841 and the Rose and Crown became a girls' boarding school, St Joseph's Convent. It is now known as the Old Coach Yard, a listed building.
| The Town Hall has a rather prominent clock tower, whose clock ticked away for 132 years and then stopped, never to go again, when the Town Council replaced the mechanism with an electric one. There is an extraordinary square roof over a little stone pillar, the market cross. The true purpose of its canopy is revealed by the yellow lettering, 'BUS STOP', painted on the cobbles in front. So this is a bus shelter, erected with enormous foresight a few centuries before the first bus. Nearby is the Tollbooth, originally mid-17th century it was rebuilt in the early 19th century after a fire. Long used and abused as four shop units, it is now being renovated. |
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This house is just up the hill from the market place. It's called the Tudor House, probably because it is a Tudor house. It has a fine front door of unpainted oak. The old road sign nearby may not be Tudor but it could do with some paint. |
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The Commercial is one of the several old pubs in Easingwold. Part of the towns charm is the unplanned distribution of shops, pubs and dwellings, haphazardly arranged around (and upon) the market square and neighbouring streets. |
The milestone outside number 104 Long Street is a grade II Listed Building.
Heading north we pass what was the White House Inn and come to a couple of small villages, Thomanby, where the Mails and some faster coaches changed horses at what was the Crown Inn and then to Birdforth. Harper is disparaging: "...the farmsteads of Birdforth, which pretends, with its mean little church, like a sanctified cow-shed, to be a village - and signally fails." Well, it's become a very pretty cow-shed. Here's a picture of the now disused church at Birdforth.
Shandy Hall, home of Laurence Stern, author of Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey, is not far east of the road, near Coxwold. The Hambleton White Horse, seen on the hillside above, was cut in 1857 - not quite pre-historic.
And when you get to Thirsk there are a lot of pubs.
B & B Lincolnshire B&B
©Biff Vernon 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008
