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Roof Farm Cottage Gunnerside, Gunnerside, London (2026)

01/09/2026

🚂 THE LOST SHANTY TOWNS OF RIBBLEHEAD

Look at Ribblehead today and you see almost nothing.

Open moorland. Sheep. Wind. Rain.

And one of the most famous railway viaducts in Britain.

But around 150 years ago, this lonely corner of the Yorkshire Dales was almost unrecognisable.

Because beneath Ribblehead Viaduct stood a rough, sprawling settlement filled with railway workers and their families.

Thousands of people descended on this remote landscape during construction of the Settle–Carlisle Railway in the 1870s.

And they needed somewhere to live.

So communities sprang up beside the works.

Not picturesque Dales villages.

Shanty towns.

Rows of temporary huts stood where today there is little but grass.

There were families and children.

Shops.

B**r houses.

Schools.

Places of worship.

Contractors’ offices.

Workshops.

Stables.

And thousands of men undertaking one of the toughest railway construction jobs in Victorian Britain.

Some of the settlements even had extraordinary names.

Batty Wife Hole.

Sebastopol.

Belgravia.

They sound like names from a novel.

They weren’t.

They were part of the temporary world created around the building of the railway at Ribblehead.

And life here could be brutal.

Imagine a Yorkshire winter on this exposed moor…

Except you’re not returning to a stone farmhouse with central heating.

You’re returning to a temporary hut.

Your boots are soaked.

The ground outside is mud.

The wind is hammering across the valley.

And tomorrow morning you’re going back out to build a gigantic stone viaduct with Victorian tools and machinery.

Then there was disease.

Outbreaks of illness swept through the settlements, while accidents claimed the lives of men working on the railway.

Some of those who came to Ribblehead looking for work…

never left.

There are graves in the surrounding area connected with the railway families and workers who died during this extraordinary period.

And towering above everything was the reason they had come.

Ribblehead Viaduct.

Twenty-four enormous stone arches stretching across Batty Moss.

Around 400 metres long.

More than 30 metres high.

Millions of bricks were used in its construction.

All built across one of the most exposed landscapes in Yorkshire.

But here’s the part I find incredible.

When the railway was completed…

the settlements disappeared.

The workers moved on.

The huts came down.

The b**r houses vanished.

The noise stopped.

And gradually…

the moor took the town back.

Today, thousands of people photograph Ribblehead Viaduct every year.

They walk beneath the arches.

They watch trains cross overhead.

They head off towards Whernside.

Most would never imagine that the quiet ground around them once echoed with hammers, steam, horses, shouting workers and children playing between the huts.

An entire community existed here.

People were born here.

People worked here.

People died here.

And then, within a few years…

almost all of it was gone.

So next time you stand beneath Ribblehead Viaduct, don’t just look upwards.

Look at the ground around you.

Because one of the Yorkshire Dales’ greatest lost communities was once standing right beneath your feet.

🚂 RIBBLEHEAD — THE TOWN THAT CAME TO BUILD A RAILWAY… AND VANISHED WHEN THE JOB WAS DONE.

👇 Did you know about Ribblehead’s shanty settlements? And has anyone in your family ever told you a story about the men who built the Settle–Carlisle line?

I’d love to hear any old family stories, photographs or local knowledge in the comments.

Yorkshire Dales Uncovered fans Ribblehead Viaduct

01/09/2026

THE MEN WHO KEEP THE DALES

There are jobs you do.

And there are jobs that become your life.

High above the valleys, beyond the villages and stone walls, there are men who know the Yorkshire Dales in a way most of us never will.

They know where the curlew will return in spring.

They know where the water lies after three days of rain.

They can read the heather, spot a change on a hillside and tell when something isn’t right.

They’ve walked these moors in sunshine, sideways rain, fog, snow and those bitter Yorkshire mornings when most of us haven’t even contemplated putting the kettle on.

They are the gamekeepers of the Dales.

And pictured here is one of them.

TOM ADAMSON — HEAD GAMEKEEPER, BOLTON ABBEY ESTATE

Tom is part of a profession whose roots stretch back centuries. The word gamekeeper became established in Britain during the 17th century, although earlier parkers and warreners had performed related roles long before that. Traditionally, keepers protected an estate’s game and guarded against poaching.

But look at the job today and you’ll find there’s far more to it than the old image of a bloke in tweed carrying a stick across the moor.

At Bolton Abbey, the keeper’s workplace includes an extraordinary expanse of Yorkshire countryside.

The estate says it manages nearly 15,000 acres of moorland and around 1,500 acres of woodland, with its gamekeepers involved in controlling invasive bracken and rush, maintaining dry-stone walls and helping protect important wildlife habitat.

And underneath their boots lies something incredibly precious.

Peat.

On Barden Moor and Barden Fell, keepers are involved in peatland restoration: blocking drainage gullies, rewetting damaged areas and planting peat-forming species such as sphagnum moss.

Bolton Abbey says around 100 hectares have been planted with sphagnum and other peat-forming vegetation, work intended to retain water, protect peat and reduce risks associated with flooding and wildfire.

Then listen carefully in spring…

Curlew.

That unmistakable call floating across the moor.

Lapwing.

Golden plover.

Redshank.

Oystercatcher.

These aren’t simply pretty birds passing through.

The Yorkshire Dales is an important breeding landscape for curlew, and the National Park Authority says management practices here — including relatively low-intensity farming and predator control — have helped curlew achieve better breeding success than in many other English landscapes.

At Bolton Abbey, Tom and the keepering team even take visitors onto the moors to see curlew and endangered waders and explain the work behind managing their habitat. Tom has also taken part in Let’s Learn Moor, helping primary-school children understand the landscape and why its management matters.

That’s the side of gamekeeping many people never see.

It’s not all shooting days.

It’s habitat.

Water.

Peat.

Walls.

Heather.

Wildlife.

Fire prevention.

Education.

And endless hours spent outside actually watching what’s happening to the land.

AND THAT KNOWLEDGE ISN’T LEARNT FROM A BOOK.

It’s learnt through years.

Often through generations.

The old keepers passed knowledge down — about weather, birds, dogs, seasons and the behaviour of the moor.

There are gamekeeping families across Yorkshire where the countryside hasn’t simply provided employment.

It has provided a way of life.

And perhaps that’s something we’ve become disconnected from.

We drive through the Dales and see a beautiful landscape.

A keeper looks at the same hillside and sees work.

Something needs repairing.

Something needs controlling.

Something needs protecting.

Something needs watching.

Something needs doing before winter.

Because much of the Yorkshire Dales we think of as wild countryside is also a working, managed landscape.

And without people actively managing it, it wouldn’t simply remain frozen exactly as we see it today.

Habitats would change. Bracken and scrub could spread in some places. Walls and other landscape features would deteriorate without maintenance. Restoration work would stop unless somebody else took it on.

That doesn’t mean every form of moorland management is beyond debate — it isn’t. Grouse-moor management, burning, predator control and shooting generate genuine environmental arguments, and different conservation groups disagree strongly about some practices.

But reducing every gamekeeper to a man whose job is simply to produce birds for shooting misses a huge part of the story.

A first-hand account from Grassington Moor describes keepers monitoring a landscape where red grouse share the moor with lapwing, curlew, redshank, golden plover and oystercatchers.

The modern keeper can be part gamekeeper, part conservation worker, part habitat manager, part firefighter, part naturalist…

and part walking encyclopaedia of a piece of Yorkshire.

And then there are mornings when it’s just one man…

a dog…

and several thousand acres of moor.

No audience.

No applause.

Just another day’s work.

That’s why people like Tom matter.

Not because the Dales belong to them.

They don’t.

But because they’re among the people who spend their working lives knowing them.

Farmers.

Wallers.

Rangers.

Foresters.

Shepherds.

And gamekeepers.

Different jobs.

Different traditions.

Sometimes different opinions about how the countryside should be managed.

But all part of the complicated human story behind the landscape millions of us love.

So next time you’re standing high on a Yorkshire moor, listening to a curlew calling somewhere beyond the heather…

remember something.

That landscape didn’t arrive yesterday.

Generations worked it before us.

People are working it today.

And whatever we decide its future should look like…

somebody will still have to get their boots on and look after it.

🧢 TOM ADAMSON
Head Gamekeeper — Bolton Abbey Estate

One of the modern keepers continuing a countryside profession with centuries of history behind it.

And one of the people working quietly behind the scenes of the Yorkshire Dales we see today.

THE KEEPERS OF THE DALES.

Not simply a job.

A life lived on the land.

Yorkshire Dales Uncovered Yorkshire Dales National Park fans

31/08/2026

BEFORE HOLLYWOOD CAME TO SWALEDALE… THIS PLACE WAS BUILT BY LEAD MINERS.

High on the moors between Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, miles from the crowds and surrounded by some of the wildest country in the Yorkshire Dales, stand the ruins of Old Gang Smelt Mill.

Today they look almost cinematic.

Broken stone walls.

A lonely chimney.

Heather-covered moorland disappearing into mist.

But this was never built to be beautiful.

It was built for industry.

For fire.

For lead.

And for the men who worked one of the harshest landscapes in Yorkshire.

The Old Gang complex became one of the great centres of lead mining and smelting in the Dales during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The oldest surviving mill here is believed to date from the late 1700s.

Then, in 1846, a newer smelt mill was constructed lower down beside the beck.

Inside, lead ore brought from the surrounding mines was heated and processed in furnaces before the metal left these remote valleys for a rapidly industrialising Britain.

And the scale of the place was extraordinary.

A huge peat store once stood nearby — around 119 metres long — reputedly capable of holding enough fuel to keep the furnaces supplied for three years.

Smoke and fumes from the smelting process were carried away through long stone flues climbing the hillside.

One flue eventually ran roughly 686 metres to a chimney high above the mill, climbing more than 150 metres from the valley floor.

Imagine this landscape then.

Furnaces burning.

Waterwheels turning.

Ore being crushed and sorted.

Men disappearing underground.

Packhorses and carts moving across the moor.

Smoke pouring towards the chimney.

And all of it happening in a place that today can feel almost completely abandoned.

The works continued operating until at least the late 1880s.

Then the industry faded.

The furnaces went cold.

Roofs disappeared.

Walls collapsed.

Heather and grass began reclaiming the ground.

But Old Gang never vanished.

The remains are now protected as part of a Scheduled Monument, because this is one of the rare places where so many different pieces of the Dales lead-mining story still survive together — mines, dressing floors, spoil heaps, smelt mills, flues and the enormous remains of the peat store.

And then, more than a century after the last great days of lead mining…

Hollywood arrived.

For the 2026 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Old Gang became one of the Yorkshire Dales filming locations.

A horse-drawn carriage passes the ruins near the beginning of the film.

Later scenes brought the actors back onto the mist-covered Swaledale moors.

The production even temporarily transformed parts of the landscape with carefully positioned props, additional vegetation and artificial mist — while Yorkshire Dales National Park heritage staff worked with the film crew to protect the archaeology beneath it all.

For around ten days, one of the loneliest industrial ruins in Yorkshire became a film set.

But the irony is that Old Gang hardly needed Hollywood.

The real story was already here.

Men spent generations cutting into these hills.

They redirected water.

Built furnaces.

Raised chimneys.

Stored thousands upon thousands of blocks of peat.

And worked in conditions that would be difficult for most of us to imagine today.

So when you walk through Old Gang and see those ruined walls against the moor…

you are not simply looking at an abandoned building.

You are standing inside the remains of an industry that helped shape Swaledale itself.

And perhaps that is why the place feels so powerful on screen.

Hollywood came looking for atmosphere.

Yorkshire had already spent two centuries creating it.

📍 Old Gang Smelt Mill, Swaledale, Yorkshire Dales

Yorkshire Dales Uncovered

fans Yorkshire Dales Uncovered

28/08/2026

We are so excited for Muker Show day on Wednesday!

We can't wait to welcome everyone, soak up the atmosphere, and keep you fed and refreshed throughout the day.

Check out our special show day menu below, served 12pm - 8pm.

Hope to see you there! 🍽️🍻