Читать книгу Walking in the Yorkshire Dales: North and East. Howgills, Mallerstang, Swaledale, Wensleydale, Coverdale and Nidderdale онлайн

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From the ruin of the Quaker Meeting House to the burial ground at East Scale (Walk 9)

Grouped in compact villages, often overlooking a green, or spread as individual farms along the valley, they are one of the endearing features of the Dales countryside. Long and narrow, the farmhouses often included an attached barn – or laithe – for the animals, and in some areas, notably Swaledale and Wensleydale, isolated barns were built in the valley fields to store summer hay and house livestock over winter.

Industry and enterprise

The relative inaccessibility of the region protected it from the burgeoning development of the Industrial Revolution, for, even though it held abundant raw materials in stone, coal and metal ore, the difficulties of transportation often rendered large-scale growth uneconomic. Yet, despite its comparatively small scale, mining and quarrying did become important local money-making activities, sometimes worked on a part-time basis to supplement income from farming. The abandoned ruins of pit-head buildings, smelters and disused quarries are to be found scattered throughout the region, often in the most inhospitable of places.