SWALE. 53 



Grinton, on the south side of the Swale, near Reeth, is the 

 old or mother parish of this dale. All the upper part of Swale- 

 dale, even to the mountain border against Westmoreland, is in- 

 cluded in it. The church is ancient. Fairs were once held here ; 

 but Reeth has now acquired the superiority, being in fact the 

 mining capital of the dale, and is even counted among busy 

 market towns. Here is the best inn of Upper Swaledale, the 

 White Hart; and from this point, Arkendale, Swaledale, and 

 parts of Wensleydale, afford much of interest to the botanist, 

 geologist, and mineralogist, and something for the archa3o- 

 logist. 



Below Grinton, the parishes become smaller and more fre- 

 quent ; the population augments ; the country loses its character 

 of wildness, and the dale deserves to be called beautiful. Mar- 

 rick Abbey, as it is called, was a house of Benedictine nuns, of 

 the 12th century. The parish church is formed of the nave 

 and the chancel of this old religious house. 



Winding by Ellerton (not the birth-place of ' Old' Jenkins*), 

 Downholme, Marske and Hudswell, the Swale, now a large 

 stream, flows among rocks and woods to Richmond, where the 

 fine reliques of a Norman castle crown a noble cliff of limestone, 

 and combine with bridge, water and wood into many charming 

 pictures (see Whitaker^s Richmondshire). 



The Norman Richmond has succeeded to the Roman Catarac- 

 tonium, and stands in a part of Yorkshire full of the traces of 

 earlier British poople. Richmondshire, that great district which 

 was taken from the Saxon Earl Edwin, and given to the nephew 

 of the Conqueror, spreads on all hands round the ancient centre 

 of population at Catterick, and includes all the mountains and 

 dales to the north, west and south. It may have been a native 

 principality before the days of Ostorius and Cartismandua. The 

 numerous, devious and extensive earth-mounds between the Swale 



* See his pillar and inscription in the church at Bolton-upon-Swale. It 

 was at Ellerton near Catterick that he was born. 



