County in Yorkshire, England
North Yorkshire
A hornblower has sounded the nightly watch in Ripon for over 1,100 years, and that's just one of North Yorkshire's stranger boasts.
Key information
- County
- Yorkshire
- Nation
- England
- Area
- England's largest county, at more than 3,000 square miles
- Known for
- The Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors, Whitby Abbey, Wensleydale cheese, Harrogate's tea rooms, Scarborough's seaside
- What locals are called
- Yorkshire folk; the old dialect nickname is Tykes
- Famous people
- Captain James Cook, James Herriot (Alf Wight), Anne Brontë, Bram Stoker (a famous visitor)
- Football clubs
- Harrogate Town, Scarborough Athletic
About North Yorkshire
The hornblower who sounds the watch at nine every night
Every evening at 9pm, a hornblower in a tricorn hat steps into Ripon's market square and blows a great curved horn at the four corners of the obelisk. Both men and women serve as the town's official hornblowers. The ceremony is said to have been "setting the watch" since 886, when Alfred the Great is supposed to have granted the town its charter. If you were out after the horn, the old rule went, the town's wakeman was responsible for any burglary you suffered. It's one of the oldest daily traditions in Britain, and a fair introduction to North Yorkshire: huge, stubborn and perfectly happy to keep doing things the old way. Ripon's cathedral has a crypt dating from the 670s, among the oldest surviving church rooms in England.
Dracula, Cædmon and a fish-and-chip view
Whitby has packed a lot into one clifftop. In the 7th century the abbey hosted the Synod of Whitby in 664, which settled how the English church would calculate Easter. It was also home to Cædmon, the cowherd-turned-monk whose hymn is the earliest surviving poem in Old English. Then in 1890 Bram Stoker came on holiday, climbed the 199 steps up to St Mary's churchyard, and borrowed the town's gloomy skyline for Dracula. In the novel the Count arrives as a black dog leaping from a wrecked ship onto Whitby's shore. Today the town holds goth weekends, sells jewellery made from Whitby jet (fossilised monkey-puzzle wood, beloved by Queen Victoria in mourning) and smokes kippers. The harbour also shaped Captain James Cook, who learned seamanship on Whitby-built coal ships before he sailed the Endeavour, a Whitby collier, round the world. Cook was apprenticed in the fishing village of Staithes, just up the coast.
Where the seaside was invented, more or less
Scarborough has a good claim to be Britain's first seaside resort. In 1626 Mrs Elizabeth Farrow noticed a spring running from the cliff, and Dr Robert Wittie soon promoted its waters as a cure. Visitors came to drink first and paddle later. Sea-bathing, donkey rides and the Grand Hotel followed. Anne Brontë came to Scarborough in 1849 hoping the sea air would help her, and died there that May. She's buried in St Mary's churchyard, below the castle, the only Brontë not laid to rest at Haworth. Inland, Knaresborough has its own record. Mother Shipton's Cave and the Petrifying Well, where hanging teddy bears and hats slowly turn to stone, have drawn paying visitors since 1630, which makes it England's oldest tourist attraction.
Cheese, tea and a Yorkshire pudding problem
Wensleydale cheese was first made by French Cistercian monks, who settled in the dale in the 12th century. It was Wallace and Gromit's favourite, a boost that helped keep the Hawes creamery going after its brush with closure in 1992. Harrogate has a taste for the finer things. Betty's Café Tea Rooms opened there in 1919, and Yorkshire Tea is blended in the town by Taylors. Masham gave the world Theakston's and Black Sheep, and Malton has made itself a food town with a busy market and festival. The Yorkshire pudding is the county's most famous contribution to Sunday lunch. It was first printed as "dripping pudding" in 1737, and by 1747 Hannah Glasse's cookbook gave it the Yorkshire name. Locals will tell you it should be served first, with gravy, to fill you up before the pricey meat.
Big skies, three peaks and a very tall viaduct
The Yorkshire Dales became a National Park in 1954, and the North York Moors in 1952. The Dales hold the Three Peaks of Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside, which hardy walkers tackle in a single day, around 24 miles. Whernside, the highest, stands at 736 metres. The Settle–Carlisle railway crosses the Dales on Ribblehead Viaduct, a 24-arch giant completed in 1874 and built by navvies living in shanty camps on the moor. The line itself opened to passenger traffic in 1876. In 2014 the Tour de France began in Yorkshire, with the first stage finishing in Harrogate, where Mark Cavendish crashed on the home straight. Fountains Abbey and Rievaulx Abbey are two of the grandest monastic ruins in Europe, and Castle Howard stood in for Brideshead in the 1981 TV adaptation. James Herriot's vet stories, drawn from Alf Wight's practice in Thirsk, gave the Dales their gentlest fame. Racehorses train on the gallops around Middleham, and Harrogate Town's rise to the Football League in 2020, via a Wembley play-off win over Notts County, gave the county a modern sporting story to go with them.
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Yorkshire Pudding
Published
Yorkshire pudding was designed to fill you up before the meat arrived, and a famous 2008 ruling said a proper one must stand at least four inches tall.