Quiet content

A 17th Century historian wrote about Guisborough that ‘the place is really fine’. It still is, says Keith Proud, who delves into its history and looks at some of the things that attract visitors to the area.

FOR centuries, the market town of Guisborough was regarded as the most important settlement on the old high road between Stockton and Whitby. Before the birth of railways and motor vehicles, it was a landmark and a haven for travellers journeying across the bleak North York moors. Down the ages, the town has been home to monks, ironstone miners and steelworkers and has been chronicled by many travellers.

In 1607, the historian William Camden wrote: “Four miles from the mouth of the Tees Gisborough stands upon a rising ground, at present a small town but formerly very famous for a beautiful and rich monastery.

The place is really fine. The inhabitants are civil and well-bred, cleanly in their diet and neat in their houses.

The coldness of the air, which the sea occasions, is qualified by the hills between. The soil is fruitful.”

In 1726, Daniel Defoe described Guisborough as “a small market-town, pleasantly situated in a vale, surrounded at some distance by hills and open on the east to the sea. It is a delightful spot. Here was once a priory of the canons of the order of St Austin (Augustine).

The town has at present a very good manufacture of sailcloth.”

Bishop Richard Pocock travelled from Stockton to Guisborough in 1760 and noted that “the road from Yarm to Guisborough is mostly clay ground with stones. The roads in winter are excessively bad and they have a narrow causeway for one horse. I went through pleasant country and near the foot of the Cleveland Hills the roads and fields improved. Guisborough is a poor town with one street and the houses are mostly thatched.”

The Scottish author Tobias Smollett visited in 1764.

“Gisborough is a handsome town,” he wrote. “The hills about this town abound with veins of iron, alum-earth of several colours and ochre.”

In 1841, by which time the local roads seem to have been improved, one Dr Augustus Bozzi Granville spoke highly, if rather condescendingly, of Guisborough, its spa and the area in general. Having described the waters of the spa, which was never properly developed, as being of the highest quality, he continued: “None but those who have visited the district would probably believe that a drive from Stockton to Gisborough affords one of the richest treats in England to the lover of landscapes; yet so it is.”

Local publisher Michael Heavisides wrote of Guisborough in the early 19th Century that it “bore an air of quiet content. Trade was carried on steadily and smoothly, old dames sat spinning within their cottage doors in homespun gowns and high-peaked caps.

“Children played in the street, while their mothers went out in the fields working for 8d a day, some walking miles to get even that, oldmensat smoking their pipes on the stone seats at their doors and colliers trudged along with droves of donkeys carrying sacks of coal on their backs brought all the way from the Durham pits.”

A former resident who left his mark on the town was the 16th Century Prior Robert Pursglove who, in 1561, founded Guisborough Grammar School and the Hospital of Jesus in the town’s churchyard. He had been prior of the monastery at Guisborough just before it was closed by Henry VIII.

From the middle of the 16th Century, the Chaloner family played a significant part in Guisborough, one of them discovering alum, used for tanning and dyeing, and established the first alum mine in Britain.

Places to visit:

Guisborough Priory

THE ruins of an Augustinian priory founded by the Bruce family, afterwards Kings of Scotland. They are dominated by the dramatic skeleton of the 14th Century church’s east end.

English Heritage charges apply. The priory lies in the centre of Guisborough.

Tel: 01287-633801

Guisborough Forest and Walkway, Pinchinthorpe

SITUATED in Pinchinthorpe about a mile west of Guisborough, at the northern end of the A173, the walkway extends for 2.5 miles along part of the route followed by the old Guisborough Branch Railway line, heading west towards Nunthorpe, and east to Guisborough Forest, which is managed by Forest Enterprise. It is a gateway site to the North York Moors National Park and offers splendid views of Roseberry Topping to the south. Tel: 01287-631132

Captain Cook’s Monument, Great Ayton

CAPTAIN James Cook was Great Ayton’s most famous son. The monument is a 51ft-high obelisk located on Easby Moor, about four miles south-west of Guisborough, and visible for miles around. It was constructed from local sandstone and was erected in 1827 by Robert Campion of Whitby.

Roseberry Topping, Newton-under-Roseberry

ROSEBERRY Topping, about three miles south of Guisborough, is a distinctive hill on the border between North Yorkshire and the borough of Redcar and Cleveland. Its summit has a distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff. There are magnificent 360-degree views from the summit and on a clear day, visitors can as far as Teesside in one direction and the Yorkshire Dales in another. Tel: 01947-841386.

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