Village Focus: Blubberhouses, North Yorkshire

It has been suggested that the name Blubberhouses originates from the weeping of children as they trudged along the Washburn Valley at the crack of dawn to start their day's work at the local flax and linen mills more than 200 years ago. Westhouse Mill was the biggest of those mills.
St Andrews Church, Blubberhouses.St Andrews Church, Blubberhouses.
St Andrews Church, Blubberhouses.

It was located just north of the present-day A59 which runs through this scattered village of houses and farmland between Harrogate and Skipton. The mill opened in the 1790s and was pulled down in 1877, after which the stone was used to aid the construction of walls round nearby Fewston Reservoir; one of four local reservoirs operated by Yorkshire Water that attract energetic visitors – walkers and riders – to the area today.

Journeying back in time and Westhouse Mill relied heavily upon child apprentices drawn from the waifs and strays of local workhouses.

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Industry created a reason for Blubberhouses’ existence but its conditions for unfortunate young labourers are not what are truly responsible for its name. Instead, the village is probably so-called for being a “place at the houses by the bubbling spring”, according to the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names.

The village lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.The village lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
The village lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.

Today the village holds no horrors – bar the usual litter and flytipping problems that trouble many a rural spot. For those who live, work and follow the well-maintained circuitous stomping routes aside the local reservoirs, Blubberhouses is easy on the eye and offers pleasing diversions.

This lush valley beside the River Washburn is home to the deputy mayor of Harrogate, Christine Ryder, and her husband, Chris, whose Scaife Hall Farm provides their livelihoods two-fold – as a bed and breakfast and as a working farm.

The couple moved here in 1987, the same year they got married, when they were awarded the farm’s tenancy by landowners Yorkshire Water. The B&B, which Christine manages, opened three years later.

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“It’s peaceful and very pretty here. We are only eight miles from Harrogate, an hour’s drive from York and the Yorkshire Dales is on our doorstep.”

The village lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.The village lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
The village lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.

Christine offers an understanding of the origins of the village’s name that tallies with the weighty Oxford tome.

“Blubber means a blubbing or swelling of water.”

Perched part way up Hardisty Hill, a short distance from Scaife Hall Farm is perhaps the village’s biggest rural enterprise success story – Mackenzies Smokehouse.

Lauren Crowson is its operations manager. Her parents Robert and Stella took over the business that was first started by Peter Mackenzie at Wood Nook Farm. It now boasts one of the most sophisticated smokehouses in the UK and has led to a host of industry awards.

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