A pleasant meadow walk by the riverside leads to Leathley, which
has a Norman church, but can scarcely be called a village, for there is
no inn. A formidable pair of stocks stand ready by the churchyard; but
as nothing stronger than milk can be procured, they have not been
worn out with too much work. Again, at Weston on the other side of
the Wharfe river we come across the roadside stocks (like the usual
Yorkshire type, with two uprights of stone) by the spreading roots of
an ancient tree. Weston Hall is a long low Tudor building, with at one
end a broad bay of three storeys. An old banqueting-house in the
grounds is ornamented with shields of arms; and formerly the
windows of it were full of heraldic stained glass, some of which is now
in the windows of the Hall. From here we went northwards in search
of Swinsty Hall, over a lonely
[Pg 245]
moorland district. The road goes up and up until you are not surprised
when you come to a signpost pointing to "To Snowdon." To the left, you are told, leads to "Blubberhouses," wherever that may be. For preference we chose the latter road, and soon got completely lost in
the wilds. The only sign of civilisation was a barn, where we had the
fortune to find an old man who presumably spoke the pure dialect, for
we couldn't make head or tail of it. "Swinsty—ai, you go on ter road until it is," was the direction he gave, and we went on and until it wasn't. At length, however, after plodding knee deep in marshy land
and saturated heather, we found the object of our search perched in
a lonely meadow above a wide stretch of water. It looked as if it had a
gloomy history; and no wonder that some of the upper rooms are held
in awe, for there the ghost of a person with the unromantic name of
Robinson is said to count over his ill-gotten gains, which he brought
down from London in waggons when the Plague of 1666 was raging.
He had the good fortune to escape contamination, and once back
with his plundered wealth he meant to have what nowadays we call
"a good time"; but the story has a moral, for it got winded abroad how
he got his gold, and nobody would have anything to do with him or his
money, and by the irony of fate he had to spend the rest of his days
in trying to wash away the germs of infection.