Novel places - Yorkshire

In 1926, shortly after the death of her mother, Agatha Christie discovered that her husband of 12 years, Colonel Archibald Christie, had fallen in love with another woman. On 3 December, she left her house, leaving a note that she was going to Yorkshire and another claiming that she feared for her life. Next day her car was found abandoned in  Surrey, and the Daily News offered a reward to anyone who found the missing novelist. For the next 10 days, the newspapers followed this sensational story, which culminated in 15,000 people searching for her body on the Merrow Downs where the car had been left. However, seeking peace and quiet and a complete rest from her domestic troubles, Agatha Christie had indeed gone to Yorkshire, booking into the Hydropathic Hotel (now the Old Swan Hotel) in Harrogate under a false name, seemingly unaware of the nationwide excitement caused by her broken marriage and her broken-down car. Ten days later, on 14 December 1926, the news broke that she had been discovered, and though she never returned there or wrote about it, Agatha Christie became forever associated with Harrogate.

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From Agatha Christie’s haven in Harrogate to the rolling moorland landscape, described so accurately in many of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novels, Yorkshire truly is a hotpot of literary inspiration.

A Woman of Substance, Heirs of Ravenscar by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Once a year the grim and savage moors of the West Riding lose their blackened and colourless aspects. At the end of August a momentary transformation takes place practically overnight, when the heather blooms in such a burst of riotous colour the dun-tinted hills blaze with a sudden and glorious splendour.Wave upon wave of purple and magenta roll across the Pennines, crowning the dark industrial valleys below with a stunning beauty that is breathtaking even to the most jaundiced eye.

The vast plateau of moorland that sweeps up above Fairley village, and which is part of that great Pennine Chain, is no exception. Here, too, the sombre harshness is obliterated through September and into October. It is almost as if an immense bolt of local cloth has been flung generously across the hills, the weft and the warp of the weave a mixture of royal purple and blues and twists of green. For on the heathery slopes grow harebells and fern and bilberry, and even the scant gnarled trees are agleam with the freshest and smallest of fluttering leaves.  (Extract from A Woman of Substance)

Barbara Taylor Bradford writes...

I grew up in Yorkshire and spent a great deal of time in Ripon, where my mother came from, and also in the surrounding area as well. Close to Ripon are the magnificent Dales, which still take my breath away in the spring and summer... actually any time of year. The Deer Park at Fountains Hall was our favourite place, and my mother took me there constantly to have picnics. It is a glorious spot and there are still hundreds of deer roaming the park.

In the 1700s, two of the previous owners of Fountains Hall on the Studley Royal estate created what is arguably the most important 18th century water garden in England. What is remarkable to me is that the garden is still much like it was when first conceived, and it is very beautiful. Also standing on the Studley Royal estate is Fountains Abbey, the most well maintained ruin in England and I most certainly recommend a visit.

However, for me, it is of course the surrounding gardens and landscape and sweeping Yorkshire moors that are the main attraction. Nearby is Middleham Castle, another ruin, that always takes me back in time. Despite the roofless rooms I see in my mind’s eye Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, known is history as the Kingmaker. He was the mentor of Richard III, who grew up there along with other members of the royal Plantagenet family. No wonder it was known as the Windsor of the north. It is another beloved spot of mine.

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On Beulah Height, Bones and Silence, A Cure for all Diseases by Reginald Hill

The narrow glaciated valley of Dendale belonged completely to the county’s wild moorlands. It was this wilderness and steep enclosure that had made the dale so attractive to the grey suits as a reservoir site. So the inevitable had happened and the valley had changed… But Nature, simply by opening her great red eye in the sky for a couple of months, had set all the plans at nought. Around the dark waters of the reservoir ran a broad pale fillet of washed rock and baked mud across which ran the lines of ancient walls and on which stood piles of shaped and faced stone showing where bits of the drowned village had come gasping up for air again. (Extract from On Beulah Height)

Andy Daziel's Yorkshire...

Andy Dalziel’s patch is called Mid-Yorkshire which sounds pretty specific. In fact it isn’t.  Coining it was a cunning ruse to give me and him access to  everywhere, for my long love affair with Yorkshire was never  based on any single area but on its infinite variety.

So you who come in search of Dalziel and Pascoe country have a long trip in prospect. You may if you wish start in the river-cleft western dales then make your slow way eastward to the rolling northern moors (across which the fit or the foolish among you can essay the aptly named Lyke Wake Walk),  before turning south down the craggy  sea-gnawed coast where Dracula first landed in England, eventually bearing inland to  the southern flatlands, often scarred by industry and  punctuated with pit heads  now as redundant as the men who worked beneath them.

Do this and you have hardly begun, for whether you are blown along with a skyful of  wild and wuthering clouds or crushed beneath a low grey ceiling of industrial smoke or  exalted into a blue empyrean  demi-semi-quavered with skylarks, there is always more ahead of you than you  leave behind.
And I haven’t mentioned the people yet, for this is country where outer and inner landscapes are inseparably mixed.  God’s Own Country the proud natives call it. If, as I do not find it hard to believe, God is a crime writer, then the appellation is well deserved!

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