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THIRSK, Ripon, Boroughbridge: Market towns provide a chance for looking beyond the obvious – as John Woodcock discovers.

For a snapshot of England’s history, and some of the personalities who shaped it, dip into the collective album provided by Boroughbridge, Ripon, and Thirsk.

They are points of a triangle almost overloaded with significant events and people who made a difference. Individually, you can view it as a three-cornered fight to try and decide which place has contributed most to the nation’s heritage. It’s a tough choice. They cover everything from an ancient mystery, to war, literary connections, and the most symbolic name in cricket.

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Start in Boroughbridge, if only because the opening shots of the contest were fired here. Unseen by traffic on the adjacent A1 are three standing stones, known as the Devil’s Arrows, and which local historian Ronald Walker describes as “among the least understood and most neglected monuments in Britain”. The tallest, at 22ft 6in, would look down on Stonehenge, yet where the stones came from, their purpose and who placed them, perhaps about 2000 BC, remain matters of speculation.

By comparison, the Romans who built a garrison town at nearby Aldborough were latecomers. Two almost complete mosaic pavements, and artefacts in a museum on the site, make this the best place in Yorkshire to study the Romans, according to English Heritage.

Boroughbridge looks prosperous enough, but used to be far busier. Until it was by-passed in 1963, it was an important stop on the Great North Road, with 22 inns and many traders. Among them was a long-gone tailor’s shop, which, a plaque recalls, was owned by the family of Archie White who won the Victoria Cross in 1916.

Across Horsefair is a reflection of modern Boroughbridge: the Curvy Bridal shop with its timely reminder, post-Royal Wedding, that not every woman can look like the Duchess of Cambridge or her sister – “stunning gowns in realistic sizes”.

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They like their catchphrases hereabouts. From “a devil of a good place”, press on to Ripon. “Stay Awhile Amid its Ancient Charms” says the boundary sign, and it has many reasons to blow its own trumpet – the Ripon Hornblower has been sounding off in the Market Place at 9pm every night for centuries. Even so the claim to being “unspoilt” can be seen another way; parts are drab and unflatteringly dated.

If only it was all as lovely as the squat cathedral. In the choir stalls, completed in 1494, a misericord depicts a griffon chasing a rabbit, while another bunny hides in a hole – possible inspirations, it’s said, for Alice in Wonderland, and all because Lewis Carroll’s father was a canon there.

For more than 1,000 years the city was literally a law unto itself. Until 1888 it operated an independent justice system. The result today is a Law and Order Trail with award-winning museums featuring a courthouse, workhouse, prison and the police. On Borrage Lane there’s the cottage where Wilfred Owen wrote some of the greatest poetry of the First World War. He was based at an Army depot in Ripon en-route back to the trenches after recuperating from shell-shock. He spent much of his 25th birthday reflecting in the cathedral, eight months before being killed the week before peace was declared.

Sanctuary Way Walks by the River Ure mark the generosity of King Athelstan in 937AD. He established the right of anyone to rest and safety overnight within the boundary of what became Ripon.

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Newby Hall, Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal are nearby, and to the north there’s Thirsk, another horse racing town, and blessed with so many personalities and interesting associations they merit eight blue plaques in and around the market place. The new tourist information office perhaps merits another: It’s in a former public toilet and run by volunteers.

The names of two former residents of Kirkgate stand out – as recognised across the world. The vet Alf Wight lived and worked there, but it’s for his writing, under a pen name, that his old home is now better-known – as the World of James Herriot. Across the road is Thirsk Museum, the birthplace in 1755 of Thomas Lord. He established a cricket ground in London’s Marylebone. He later moved the turf to Regent’s Park. In 1814, he took it to St John’s Wood, where it stayed. For lovers of the game, one word born in Thirsk encapsulates its traditions, politics, its very essence – Lord’s.

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* Two businesses in the area have won national awards. Among numerous accolades, Lockwoods café bar and restaurant in North Street, Ripon, has been voted “No.1 family-run restaurant in the UK” by The Times. Currently it is also displaying work by the award-winning Yorkshire photographer Paul Berriff.

* White Rose Books in Thirsk Market Place was named Independent Bookseller of the Year in the North and Scotland, 2010.

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* Boroughbridge’s Butter Market Museum is possibly the smallest yet most accessible anywhere. Its display of industrial, domestic and farming artefacts donated by local people can be viewed at any time.