Learning to read the history in a landscape

We are at the top end of Nidderdale, reservoir county. The waters of Gouthwaite, Scar House and Angram drain the fells and provide much of urban Yorkshire with its water.

The abandoned village of Lodge stands above the expanse of Scar House and this week it was being scrutinised as never before by a team of professional archaeologists and historians as part of a project to preserve what is left, and explain it to the walkers who pass every day of the year.

Once, the track was a main route between dales. Down dale there’s Pateley Bridge; above, there is still a decent track over Dead Man’s Hill into Coverdale and beyond.

The inhabitants of Lodge would also have walked to Masham, in Wensleydale, another important centre in the days when monasteries owned the area.

When Scar House reservoir was opened in 1937, Lodge was abandoned, says Sally Childes, heritage officer for the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The AONB appellation does justice to this magnificent landscape, enriched just now by the wheeling shrieks of the plover and the trilling glide of the curlew.

Lodge was one of a number of small places at the top end of Nidderdale which became abandoned in the early 20th century.

Each settlement, including Angram, Westhouses and Haden Carr, consisted of a few farms built on the sites of sheep lodges belonging to the Cistercian Abbey of Byland. In the 15th century each hamlet was valued at 10 shillings a year (50p).

In 1539 each of the three tenants of Lodge held one-third of Lodge Ing, a meadow, and one third of Lodge Pasture. Lodge is the only one of these four settlements not to be submerged by reservoirs, but all that remains of the buildings are piles of stone and a few doorways.

Granges were typically strung out along the upper valley, at convenient intervals for the management of stock.

They were mainly on the north side of the river, enjoying the southern aspect and the shelter afforded by the curve of fells behind, says Sally, drawing on local research.

Sally has been leading the team this week, joined by amateurs and anyone who was willing to lend a hand with the measuring, mapping and assessment. One of their helpers was a cousin of the last person born at Lodge, in 1926.

Lodge was once a self- sufficient community, with a church and possibly an inn. The 1851 census shows there were two scholars among the farmers.

The Wesleyan Chapel was built in 1858 and in the 1870s there were 12 attenders living in Lodge.

On a harsh April day with a searing wind one wonders why anyone would start a village just there on an exposed hillside.

Winters would have been cruelly cold and restrictive, but John Burglass, an archaeologist hired to help with the study, explains the reasons.

Centuries ago the buildings may have been protected by more trees, but the position was chosen carefully, he reasons.

Evidence includes the human effort needed to quarry the building stone and transport it by horse-drawn cart and hand-barrow over many miles and then dress it for shape and fit on site.

John points to some cubes of rock weighing maybe half a ton each. “This is substantial masonry and has meant a huge amount of work”, says John, as evidence that the site was far from random but chosen wisely.

Its position in the hills was at the highest level which was practical. The villagers would have sheep for wool and meat, and then lower down would fish and have game birds.

They grew their own vegetables including turnip and potatoes, kept in a stone hut built into the hill to keep an even temperature and aired by a ventilation hole at the back.

“A tattie house”, says Jen Deadman, a freehand historic buildings surveyor working with Nidderdale AONB. “Potatoes and turnips were a staple of the rural diet”. The only dietary evidence today in the well-preserved store house is a disintegrating Asda container for garlic chicken liver pate, 74p or three for £2. That should be easy to date.

Jen’s major work in the AONB is on an extensive survey of farm buildings – recording more than a thousand properties.

Like John Burglass, she is kept busy with expert advice on modern developments involving important old properties.

Currently, she is looking at a house in Masham which dates from the 12th century when it was occupied by a prebendary for York Minster.

Masham, she explains, was a Golden Prebendary because of its wealthy estates. This “prebendal house” in Masham is, she notes, “as rare, or rarer than hen’s teeth”.

John Burglass says he is working “flat out – typical of the archaeological profession at the moment”.

The bread and butter work is looking at how new-build or re-build will affect sensitive sites.

He had just completed a survey at Easby Abbey, in Swaledale, called in ahead of a drainage scheme to prevent flooding.

“It turned up an early 10th or 11th century church under the road”, he reveals, plus a couple of burials, to be expected, and other church-related remains.

Jen and Sally and John tread through the tumbled-down piles with care.

John is new to the site but is quickly recognising and interpreting the evidence. He picks up fragments of black glazed pottery – “black courseware – for storage, thrown on a wheel.”

He runs a thumbnail across the surface. “Look, you can feel the grooves made by the potter’s fingers.”

He differentiates between the faint blue patterns applied by transfer to domestic crockery, and the deeper blue of the hand-painted designs which preceded transfer ware.

These shards have been thrown up by burrowing rabbits in what was a kitchen garden, the soil soft for easy tunneling by Peter Rabbit, and once enriched by dumped vegetable and human waste.

There is half a child’s cup among the litter. A broken cast-iron bread oven leans askew. John picks up a scrap of slate which he recognises as Welsh.

For roofing? Probably not. “These buildings would have been roofed with traditional stone slates, so it is possible that this was a slate for writing on – which would show they were literate,” he deduces. Perhaps the scholars at work?

Another telling comment from John Burglass concerns the time of the year when such ancestors died.

A common month was May, because by then the stores of food from the previous year were getting stale and rotten, with decay and mould.

The project at Lodge is part of a three-year programme in Nidderdale AONB funded by Yorkshire Dales Leader.

Sally Childes adds: “This wonderful site has a fascinating history, and the survey will provide information about the history of the site, which will inform conservation, and provide further information for visitors to the area.”

Sources: Mary Barley, Local Historian. Jennings History of Nidderdale, The Book of Nidderdale, Nidderdale Museum Society.

FINDING YOUR WAY TO VANISHED LODGE

Scar House Reservoir is operated by Yorkshire Water. Public access is allowed, with parking and a recently renovated WC. It is 11 miles from Pateley Bridge, on an access road near Middlesmoor. Lodge hamlet is reached by foot, crossing the reservoir dam wall and turning left on the track, known as Carle Fell Road, along the far side of the water. Strong footwear is recommended. Keep walking beyond Lodge to go over Arkleside Moor to Horsehouse, Coverdale. Nidderdale AONB, King Street, Pateley Bridge, Harrogate, HG3 5LE. Tel: 01423 712950.