The Land of the Lune - Drakkar Press

70 Chapter 4: Upper Rawtheydale
The Rawthey from Sally Beck ...
As the Rawthey swings south it passes Murthwaite
Park, the only sizable area of ancient woodland in
the Howgills. The scrubby birch, hazel, ash and alder are
still home to red squirrels although perhaps for not much
longer as on two recent occasions I think I glimpsed grey
squirrels as well. But perhaps I am unduly pessimistic:
I understand that the present cull of grey squirrels is
beginning to bring red squirrels back to the Howgills
area.
Many becks from the eastern Howgills and West
Baugh Fell join the Rawthey as it continues south through
luxuriant green pastures. Wandale Beck runs from
Adamthwaite, an isolated farmhouse that has the honour
of being the habitation nearest to the Lune’s source,
just 2km southeast of Green Bell. The next significant
tributary, Backside Beck, runs, appropriately, from the
Wandale Hill from the slopes of Yarlside
back side of Green Bell. All the Howgills, therefore,
except for a small part northeast of Green Bell, is within
the Lune catchment area. The farmstead of Mountain
View, above Backside Beck, is abandoned, but what can
you expect of a place called Mountain View? It has to be
something like Cobblethwaite to survive up here.
Wandale Beck and Backside Beck are notable
for exposures of fossil-rich Ordovician and Silurian
rocks along their beds, of great interest to geologists.
According to the Site of Special Scientific Interest
description “the Cautley Mudstones of Rawtheyan age
are of a dominantly dalmanellid-plectambonitacean
assemblage”, which is more than I could ask for.
Within the Rawthey valley there are a few
farmsteads, a garage and the Cross Keys Inn. The inn
was originally a farmstead called High Haygarth (Low
Haygarth continues nearby as a horse-breeding farm). It
is older than the date (1730) newly installed over its door.
This is Chapter 4 of The Land of the Lune (2nd edition), http://www.drakkar.co.uk/landofthelune.html, Copyright © 2010 John Self