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WALK 8 - Beacon Banks, Husthwaite and Kilburn
Our starting point is Coxwold, one of England’s most beautiful villages. Set back behind neatly mown grass verges, elegant stone cottages and houses line its broad main street. The most imposing feature in the village is St Michael’s Church with its stately octagonal tower. The church was built in the fifteenth century and, apart from minor repairs, still stands as it was built. The interior contains some majestic memorials to the Fauconberg and Belasyse families. The oldest of these is the altar tomb bearing the date 1603. It shows the recumbent effigies of Sir William Belasyse and his wife Margaret. The Fauconbergs held title to the estates of Newburgh Priory. According to tradition the headless body of Oliver Cromwell was brought here after the Restoration by his daughter, Lady Mary Fauconberg, who had retrieved it from the Tyburn gallows. It is interred in a bricked-up tomb above the porch. His head, which spent twenty years on a spike, is buried in the chapel at Sussex College, Cambridge.
At the top of the village stands Shandy Hall, home from 1760 until his death in 1768 of the eccentric writer Laurence Sterne. It was here that he wrote volumes three to nine of Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey. Shandy Hall contains the world's largest collection of Sterne's novels plus contemporary prints and paintings illustrating his work.
From the village we follow a field path leading gently uphill to Beacon Banks. The sweeping views embrace the beautiful Vale of York, the Hambleton Hills and the distant Pennines. Beacon Banks inherited its name from having had a beacon placed on its summit to alert the country when threatened with danger. It was used to signal the approach of the Armada in 1588. During World War II the Home Guard kept watch here for possible invaders.
After leaving the ridge we descend along the road into Husthwaite. At one time Husthwaite was also known as 'the Orchard Village' and, although it has fewer orchards today, its apple, pear and plum trees still produce a plentiful crop. Adjacent to the green stands the church of St Nicholas. Predominantly Norman, it consists of a nave, chancel, porch and a low square tower containing three bells. The fine oak roof is the work of the Mouseman of Kilburn, and six ‘mice’ are to be found on the altar, the reredos and the litany desk.
Our route continues through the fields to Kilburn, with the White Horse visible for much of the way. Kilburn’s history can be traced back to the ninth century when is was settled by Norse invaders. It is recorded in the Domesday Book as ‘Chileburne’ which translates as ‘Cylla’s or Kyle’s stream’. The village is divided into High and Low Kilburn, which are about a quarter of a mile apart. High Kilburn is situated on a shelf on the hillside, its houses placed around a large green. Low Kilburn is the heart of the village with the church and inn adjacent to the square.
The church, dedicated to St Mary, is an early Norman structure founded about 1120. The tower was added in 1667 and the whole church was restored in 1869. The porch has a sundial with the words ‘Certa ratio’ which freely translated means ‘The right time’. The chapel contains two coffin stones dating from the thirteenth century. One bears a pastoral staff and was probably made for an abbot of Byland Abbey or a prior of Newburgh Priory; the other, an extremely rare type, displays a shield with a round boss and the long-shafted ‘Martel’, or fighting hammer of a ‘Champion’. Kilburn’s Champion fought in place of the abbot or prior in ‘trial by combat’, a Norman method for settling a legal dispute.
Robert Thompson, the ‘Mouseman’, was born at Kilburn in 1876. His mouse trademark which he carved on all his oak furniture, is world-famous. The trademark came about from the expression ‘as poor as a church mouse’. Although Robert died in 1955, his business has carried on and is now run by his great-grandsons. The company still uses the mouse for its trademark, or trademarks, each craftsman carving his own individual mouse.
After savouring the attractions which both of the Kilburns offer we continue via meadows and quiet lanes returning us to Coxwold. |
