Goathland: History behind Yorkshire moors village where Heartbeat was filmed and where the name came from

The station, Goathland Bank Top, used to be located within the village, and the carriages were drawn up by a rope-worked drum system.

The railway closed in 1865 when a new station opened on a diversionary line to Grosmont. It closed to regular passenger traffic in 1965 and was re-opened as part of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in 1973.

The village was the setting of the fictional village of Aidensfield in the Heartbeat TV series set in the 1960s.

History of Goathland and where the name comes from

The village is on a hill 486 feet above sea level and has a recorded history dating back to just after the Norman Conquest.

King Henry I passed over the land to Osmund the Priest and the brethren of the hermitage of Goathland in 1109, then called Godelandia, for the soul of his mother, Queen Matilda, who died in 1083.

The name Goathland is likely a combination of ‘good land’, alternatively it may have come from ‘Goda’s land’. Goda is an Old English personal name.

During the 1800s, the village was a spa town and there are many hotels and guest houses in the area, the largest being the Mallyan Sprout Hotel, which is named after a nearby waterfall.

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The Duchy of Lancaster owned most of the surrounding land and the tenants have a common right extending for hundreds of years to graze their sheep on the village green and surrounding moorland.

While the current Grade II listed St Mary’s Church was built between 1894 and 1896, a chapel has existed in Goathland since at least the 16th century.

There is one primary school based in the village as well as a library that ran until 1966 before it was resurrected as a volunteer library and community hub in 2019 from the village hall.