5BEST SEASIDE RESORT SCARBOROUGH “Scarborough Spa” became Britain’s first seaside resort after a stream of acidic water was discovered running down one the cliffs above its port in the seventeenth century. In those days such waters were considered good for one’s health and by 1735 Britain’s first bathing machines were being rolled out into the sea from Scarborough’s beaches. In the nineteenth century many hotels were constructed on top of Scarborough’s cliffs including The Crown, which was Yorkshire’s first purpose-built resort hotel and The Grand, which was the biggest hotel in Europe when it opened in 1867. Both still welcome guests today. The town also has a number of Georgian structures built for visitors including the Rotunda Museum, the Cliff Bridge, and Scarborough Pier Lighthouse. Its church contains works by the Pre-Raphaelite artists Rossetti, Burne-Jones, William Morris and Ford Madox Brown. Another famous name associated with this fashionable resort was the novelist Anne Brontë who in 1849 died in a clifftop boarding house where the Grand Hotel stands today. Ironically she had come to Scarborough to try and recover her health. visitscarborough.com © BRITAINONVIEW/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO 68 BritishTravelJournal.com
7 BEST TOWN RICHMOND James Herriot, author of All Creatures Great & Small told the story of a man from Richmond going to heaven only to be told by St Peter that he might find his new home a bit disappointing. The market town of Richmond at the foot of Swaledale is truly gorgeous and full of elegant Georgian houses that teeter down steep wynds (streets) towards the river Swale. It’s dominated by the 100-foot keep of a huge Norman castle that was completed here in 1086. Scolland’s Hall, a residential building within the castle complex is one of the oldest buildings in England and the castle’s outer bailey is now the town’s market place. Today Richmond has a working cinema in its old railway station and a tiny Theatre Royal which dates back to 1788 and has recently been restored to its original Georgian colour scheme. Not surprisingly Richmond is also a popular base from which to explore the Yorkshire Dales National Park of Swaledale, Wharfedale and Wensleydale. richmond.org/guide 6 BEST HOTEL MIDDLETHORPE HALL & SPA Middlethorpe Hall is one of the National Trust’s Yorkshire gems, a sublime example of William and Mary architecture. It was constructed in expensive red brick in 1699 for Thomas Barlow, a wealthy Sheffield industrialist.Thomas sited it close to the main road into York so no one could fail to notice his wealth. When the Barlow family went on the Grand Tour in 1712 they let their house to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had just eloped with her new husband Edward. He was soon appointed the British ambassador to Constantinople and after their departure she went on to be an eminent Georgian woman of letters. Today the house and its chequered marble floors are furnished with eighteenth-century antiques and – delightfully – it doubles as a hotel run by the Historic House Hotels group. There are ten bedrooms in the house itself, 16 in the adjoining eighteenth-century stable block courtyard and three cottages in the grounds. The hotel’s wood-panelled Oak Room is one of the most glamorous restaurants in the York area. middlethorpe.com à BritishTravelJournal.com 69
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