Your guide to the villages

BOGGLE HOLE

A tiny cove with an old mill behind it which used to be powered by Mill Beck. It is now a Youth Hostel and field study centre. Cars must be parked at the small car park inland. A boggle is another form of Yorkshire sprite or hobgoblin.

CASTLETON

Once the largest village in Esk Dale, it used to be a centre of industry with a market and busy railway. A wooden Norman castle with three moats once stood here. Information about fishing between April and September can be obtained from the post office. There are picturesque views from the road leading over Castleton Rigg to the isolated Lion Inn on Blakey Moor and into Hutton-le-Hole. Castleton’s surroundings are rich in archaeological remains, especially evidence of the Bronze Age.

EGTON BRIDGE

One of England’s most famous Roman Catholic parishes, known as The Village Missed By The Reformation, and is dominated by the church of St Edda. Its great roof is decorated with golden stars on a blue background. Father Nicholas Postgate, Martyr Of The Moors, kept the faith alive here but was executed in York, aged 82, for baptising a child in 1679. Halfway up the hill to Egton (from Egetune meaning town of oaks) is the Mass House where Postgate conducted secret masses.

GROSMONT

Here is the Northern terminus of the North York Moors Railway. The village had a Roman road through it and a fort to protect it. There is no trace left of the priory which was founded in 1200. It was in 1863 that the finest quality iron was discovered and the village was built to house the many miners needed. More than 100,000 tons of ore were mined each year and carried to Whitby on the new railway. The mine closed in 1871.

LYTHE AND SANDSEND

Lythe Bank is a very steep hill winding its way up from Sandsend where the road runs along the side of the sea. With a sandy beach and no amusement arcades, Sandsend is an ideal spot in which to relax. Meanwhile, Lythe is a small village with a church founded in Saxon times. Seven sailors are buried there who died in the sea below during World War I but who have never been identified. There is a tiny blacksmith’s shop with an anvil which is used during an old custom of Firing the Stiddy (anvil). It celebrates notable events in the family of the Marquis of Normanby of Mulgrave Castle. The grounds of the castle are open to the public on Wednesdays and the weekends (but not in May).

PORT MULGRAVE

The harbour was built in the 1850s for shippage of ironstone to Jarrow and it once handled 3,000 tones of ore per week. Shafts were sunk from the clifftop to the seams and the ore was discharged at the quay through a tunnel, now blocked. In its heyday the port was fed by a 2ft 6in gauge railway mostly underground from the mines of Boulby and Roxby Beck.

RAVENSCAR

This could be called the town that never was. A series of streets lead nowhere and there are a few houses dotted about. These are the only signs that a grandiose scheme was devised in 1895 by a group of businessmen who wanted to build another Scarborough. The main reason it failed was due to the unstable geology of the area. Raven Hall Hotel was once a private house where George III was sent during his frequent bouts of madness.

ROBIN HOOD’S BAY

Magnificent views and the haphazard siting of the cottages attracts hoards of photographers and artists. The jumble of buildings is said to be caused by couples not wanting to live far from their parents, but it is more likely to be because of the steepness of the site. Smuggling was rife and many of the buildings have secret passageways so that contraband could be passed secretly from the bottom of the village to the top without ever going outside, or so the story goes. Leo Walmsley, who lived here, modelled the Bramblewick of his novels on the village. Cars must be parked at the top.

RUNSWICK BAY

An attractive little seaside village of pretty red-roofed quaint cottages perched in improbable positions on the steep hillside. It was formerly notorious for smuggling and has a fine sandy beach. There is a car park at the bottom of a very steep hill with shops, hotels and restaurants. The lifeboat is always on standby as this can be a dangerous spot with fast-rising tides. In 1901 the village women launched the heavy lifeboat themselves to save their fishermen husbands whose cobles had been caught in a storm.

RUSWARP

Set in the beautiful valley of the Esk, Ruswarp boasts an iron bridge, a tall brick viaduct, an old mill, boats to take out on the river and a miniature steam railway (71/4 gauge) which runs on half a mile of landscaped track on the banks of the River Esk. When the Esk broke its banks on September 4 1931 two elderly women became marooned at Ruswarp and had to be rescued by the Whitby lifeboat. Three pairs of horses hauled it through the streets and lanes to be launched just below the church two miles inland from the sea.

SLEIGHTS

In Whitby’s more prosperous days the wealthy built houses at Sleights, away from the bleakness of the moors. A bridge carries the A169 across the Esk above Sleights Station and provides excellent views. The first enemy aircraft to be shot down in England during World War II fell near Sleights Lane End and a plaque commemorates it on an obelisk at the junction with the Whitby-Guisborough road. Fighter pilot Peter Townsend, later Group Captain Peter Townsend, was responsible for the plane’s demise and he later became well known for his romance with Princess Margaret.

SNEATON

From here you can look down on the River Esk and out to the moors and sea, and from the hill, where a beacon flamed years ago, is a fantastic view of Whitby. The church, which was built in 1823, has a tower which is oddly crowned by a lantern and a stumpy spire. Inside is a well-preserved font which was hewn from a great block of stone by the Normans and has carvings of zigzags, star patterns, spirals and crosses in circles. During the Second World War forces personnel involved in the setting up of decoy villages on the moors were billeted at the Wilson Arms in Sneaton. The mock villages were used to draw enemy fire away from the larger urban areas to the moors.