On one side of us is the King’s Head, whose steep tiled roof and square front has just that air of respectable importance that one expects to find in an old-established English hotel. It looks across the cobbled space to the curious block of buildings that seems to have been intended for a church but has relapsed into shops. The shouldering of secular buildings against the walls of churches is a sight so familiar in parts of France that this market-place has an almost Continental flavour, in keeping with the fact that Richmond grew up under the protection of the formidable castle built by that Alan Rufus of Brittany who was the Conqueror’s second cousin. The town ceased to be a possession of the Dukes of Brittany in the reign of Richard II., but there had evidently been sufficient time to allow French ideals to percolate into the minds of the men of Richmond, for how otherwise can we account for this strange familiarity of shops with a sacred building which is unheard of in any other English town? Where else can one find a pork-butcher’s shop inserted between the tower and the nave, or a tobacconist doing business in the aisle of a church? Even the lower parts of the tower have been given up to secular uses, so that one only realizes the existence of the church by keeping far enough away to see the sturdy pinnacled tower that rises above the desecrated lower portions of the building. In this tower hangs the curfew-bell, which is rung at 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., a custom, according to one writer, ‘that has continued ever since the time of William the Conqueror.’ The bell, we know, is not Norman, and the tower belongs to the Perpendicular period, but the church is referred to in Norman times, and Leland, writing in the reign of Henry VIII., suggests an earlier survival. He may, of course, be describing Norman grotesque carvings, but, on the other hand, he may be recording some relics of a more barbarous age when he writes: ‘There is a Chapel in Richemont Toune with straung Figures in the Waulles of it. The Peple there dreme that it was ons [a temple of] Idoles.’ I wonder if those carved figures were entirely destroyed in the days of the Commonwealth, or whether they were merely thrown aside during some restoration, and are waiting for digging or building operations to bring them to light.
All the while we have been lingering in the market-place the great keep has been looking at us over some old red roofs, and urging us to go on at once to the finest sight that Richmond can offer, and, resisting the appeal no longer, we make our way down a narrow little street leading out to a walk that goes right round the castle cliffs at the base of the ivy-draped walls. If this walk were at Harrogate or Buxton, we can easily imagine that its charms would be vitiated by some evidences of a popular recognition of its attractiveness. There would be a strong ornamental iron railing on the exposed side of the path; there would probably be an automatic-machine waiting to supply a souvenir picture post-card of the view; there would be notices—most excellent where they are needed—requesting visitors not to throw paper or orange-peel anywhere but in the receptacle supplied; and, besides all this, there would, I have no doubt, be ornamental shrubberies, and here and there a few beds of flowers, kept with all the neatness of municipal horticulture. Such efforts would meet with some sort of response on the part of the public, and the castle walk would be sufficiently populous to prevent anyone from appreciating its charms. No; instead of all this we find a simple asphalt path without any fence at all. There are two or three seats that are perfectly welcome, but there is a delightful absence of shrubberies or flower-beds, and the notices to the public fixed to the castle walls are weathered and quite inconspicuous. Beyond all this, the castle walk is generally a place in which one can be alone, and yet
‘This is not solitude; ’tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms, and see those charms unfold.’
From down below comes the sound of the river, ceaselessly chafing its rocky bottom and the big boulders that lie in the way. You can distinguish the hollow sound of the waters as they fall over ledges into deep pools, and you can watch the
RICHMOND CASTLE FROM THE RIVER
This well-known view of the castle from the banks of the Swale is only one of the numerous romantic pictures that can be found in Richmond. The great Norman keep, built about the year 1150, forms the dominating feature of every aspect of the town.
silvery gleams of broken water between the old stone bridge and the dark shade of the woods. The masses of trees clothing the side of the gorge add a note of mystery to the picture by swallowing up the river in their heavy shade, for, owing to its sinuous course among the cliffs, one can see only a short piece of water beyond the bridge.
The old corner of the town at the foot of Bargate appears over the edge of the rocky slope, but on the opposite side of the Swale there is little to be seen beside the green meadows and shady coppices that cover the heights above the river.
There is a fascination in this view in its capacity for change. It responds to every mood of the weather, and every sunset that glows across the sombre woods has some freshness, some feature that is quite unlike any other. Autumn, too, is a memorable time for those who can watch the face of Nature from this spot, for when one of those opulent evenings of the fall of the year turns the sky into a golden sea of glory, studded with strange purple islands, there is unutterable beauty in the flaming woods and the pale river.
On the way back to the market-place we pass a decayed arch that was probably a postern in the walls of the town. There can be no doubt whatever of the existence of these walls, for Leland begins his description of the town with the words ‘Richemont Towne is waullid,’ and in another place he says: ‘Waullid it was, but the waul is now decayid. The Names and Partes of 4 or 5 Gates yet remaine.’ He also tells us the names of some of these gates: ‘Frenchegate yn the North Parte of the Towne, and is the most occupied Gate of the Towne. Finkel-streate Gate, Bargate, all iii be downe.’ Leland also details how the wall enclosed little beside the market-place, the houses adjoining it, and the gardens behind them, and that the area occupied by the castle was practically the same as that of the town. We wonder why Richmond could not have preserved her gates as York has done, or why she did not even make the effort sufficient to retain a single one, as Bridlington and Beverley did. The two posterns—one we have just mentioned, and the other in Friar’s Wynd, on the north side of the market-place, with a piece of wall 6 feet thick adjoining—are interesting, but we would have preferred something much finer than these mere arches; and while we are grumbling over what Richmond has lost, we may also measure the disaster which befell the market-place in 1771, when the old cross was destroyed. Before that year there stood on the site of the present obelisk a very fine cross which Clarkson, who wrote about a century ago, mentions as being the greatest beauty of the town to an antiquary. A high flight of steps led up to a square platform, which was enclosed by a richly ornamented wall about 6 feet high, having buttresses at the corners, each surmounted with a dog seated on its hind-legs. Within the wall rose the cross, with its shaft made from one piece of stone. There were ‘many curious compartments’ in the wall, says Clarkson, and ‘a door that opened into the middle of the square,’ but this may have been merely an arched opening. The enrichments, either of the cross itself or the wall, included four shields bearing the arms of the great families of Fitz-Hugh, Scrope (quartering Tibetot), Conyers, and Neville. From the description there is little doubt that this cross was a very beautiful example of Perpendicular or perhaps Decorated Gothic, in place of which we have a crude and bulging obelisk bearing the inscription: ‘Rebuilt (!) A.D. 1771, Christopher Wayne, Esq., Mayor’; it should surely have read: ‘Perpetrated during the Mayoralty of Christopher Wayne, Goth.’ The old cross was pulled down ‘for particular reasons,’ says Clarkson, but, even if those reasons had been valid, the stones might have been carefully marked, and the whole structure could have been rebuilt in some other part of the market-place.
Although, as we have seen, Leland, who wrote in 1538, mentions Frenchgate and Finkel Street Gate as ‘down,’ yet they must have been only partially destroyed, or were rebuilt afterwards, for Whitaker, writing in 1823, mentions that they were pulled down ‘not many years ago’ to allow the passage of broad and high-laden waggons.