The population has been subject to considerable fluctuation,

in 1801, it was 592; in 1811, 710; 1821, 777; 1831,

698; 1841,

; 1851, 673; and in 1861, 739.

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F

HARTWITH.

This township is situate to the northward of Dacre, from which it is divided by the river Nidd for a part of its length, the remainder of the boundary on that side being the "Munk Wall" already mentioned, which divides it from the parish of Hampsthwaite, and the township of Clint in the parish of Ripley; on the other three sides it abuts on the townships of Bishop Thornton, Warsall, and Bishopside, in the parish of Ripon. Hartwith-with-Winsley constitute a chapelry in the parish of Kirkby Malzeard, from which they are 8 miles distant. The hamlets of Summer-bridge, New York, Low Laith, Braisty Woods, Brimham Rocks, Brimham Hall, and Lodge, Winsley, and Hardcastle Garth, are all within this township; which presents great variety of soil and scenery, but to the tourist the great attraction are the rocky wonders of Brimham.

Previous to the Norman conquest Brimham* was held by two Saxons, Gospatric and Gamelbar; after that event Gamelbar was entirely dispossessed, and Gospatric only held three carucates and two oxgangs; three other carucates which had

* Brimham is the high, or exposed home or dwelling, Brim being yet a common term in this neighbourhood for an elevated place exposed to. wind and weather. Hartwith is not mentioned in Domesday-it means simply the wood or forest of the Hart. Winsley appears to be only the Whinny field-Whin being the name commonly used for the gorse plant, Ulex Europæus.

4

belonged to him, were held by Erneis de Burun, and two oxgangs which had been Gamelbar's, were held by Gilbert Tyson. The lands of these three lords were however soon swallowed up by the Mowbray fee, and in a short time afterwards again disposed of for religious uses. Roger de Mowbray gave this township to the abbot and convent of Fountains reserving for his own use a buck, a doe, a wild boar, and a kid annually, and what birds he thought proper to take. This reservation tells us what the principal inhabitants of Brimham at that time were, and from them we may infer the state of the country; an uncultivated region of

Rocks, caves,

lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades."

In the year 1280, Roger de Mowbray, third baron of that name, gave all the wild beasts and birds in the whole forest of Brimham, for the use of the Infirmary at Fountains, and allowed the monks to have their own foresters.

The monks held possession of their lands in this township until the dissolution of their house in 1539, when the whole came to the crown ;* from which it was soon granted out, the soil passing to many different owners, while the royalty, with a considerable estate came into possession of the Nortons of Grantley, Lords Grantley and Markenfield, in which they yet continue.

* The valuation at that time was-The Lordship of Hertwith £18 18s. 10d. per annum; The Lordship of Wyndsley, £12 15s. 1d.; Logia Brimben, £11 13s. 4d.; and Hardcastle 40s. per annum. At the same time Richard Haxby was bailiff of Hartwith, whose annual fee was 20s. Miles Hardcastle was bailiff of Wyndsley, Brimben, and Warshall, whose wages were 26s. 8d. per annum, and Lawrence Smyth was receiver of the rents of Brimham, and received 40s. a year for his trouble.

BRIMHAM ROCKS.

These celebrated rocks, one of the wonders of Nidderdale, are situate on a piece of elevated ground, about sixty acres in extent, on the north side of the valley of the Nidd, about one and a half miles from Dacre Banks station, four from Pateley Bridge, nine from Ripon, ten from Harrogate by road, and upwards of twelve by railway. Placed at an elevation of nine hundred and ninety feet above the level of the sea, and exposed to the fierce action of the elements on every side; these rocks present a most singular appearance at a distance, they have been compared to a ruined city of Titans, and the broken skeleton of a mountain -the last no inappropriate comparison. No description can do justice to them; their grotesque singularity and rugged grandeur alike defy the pen of the poet, and the pencil of the artist. Produced by a violent disruption of nature, when the crust of the earth has been rent asunder, and these heavy masses of millstone grit upheaved and piled around in random confusion, afterwards washed and worn into crevices, and their forms rounded and smoothed by the waves of a sea beating on and around them; the softer parts have yielded to the action of these elements, which the harder have resisted, hence their strange and uncouth forms, which fill all beholders with amazement. Thousands of years must have elapsed since

any material change has taken place in their forms, as they are thickly coated with mosses and lichens, and no process of waste is visible at present; many of their heads are crested with masses of heath or ling, growing out of a stratum of peat, in some cases fifty or sixty feet above the surface. The first person who had the ability to describe what he saw was Mr. Pennant, who visited these rocks in company with George Allen, Esq., of Darlington, in the year 1777. He thus describes his visit: "The celebrated Crags, the supposed aggregate of Druidical antiquities, are on the rude plain of the summit; beneath which is a vale, wooded with birch, holly, and hazel. The crags are dispersed in all parts, in groups of various extents, and frequently in single masses. They are often undiscribable, and require the best skill of the artist to give an adequate idea of their multiform singularity.

On my arrival on the summit of the hill, the seat of wonders, my astonishment was unspeakable; the whole was new to me; a flat, covered with stones of forms the most singular, and many of sizes most stupendous-My fancy could not create remains of the works of art, or relics of Druidical superstition. Like the philosophers in the court of Brobdignag, I sheltered my ignorance, that I had found nothing but relplum scalcath; which is literally interpreted lusus naturæ, the sports of nature: the coincidence of a multitude of stones, at the great event of the subsidence of the waters after the deluvian catastrophe, or which nature, in her frolics, caused to assume the variety of impressed forms we see on them. The stony part will retain them to eternity; they were left concealed in the soft or muddy part which subsided with them, * Tour from Alston Moor to Harrogate, p. 118.