#coxwold

Uffington White Horse (Wikimedia Commons)

We’ve got our own white horse here in North Yorkshire, near Kilburn.  It’s really rather modern.  Back in 1857, a Kilburn-born man, Thomas Taylor, who’d become a provision merchant down in London thought that his home village should have its very own version of the Uffington White Horse.  He got John Hodgson, who was the local schoolmaster, together with the schoolchildren and a band of volunteers to cut a horse shape from the turf to reveal the sandstone beneath.  Six tons of lime were used to whiten the image, which can be seen from many vantage points in North Yorkshire, and on a clear day, from as far away as Leeds, 45 miles away, and even North Lincolnshire.

Kilburn White Horse (Wikimedia Commons)

And that’s where we went yesterday for an energetic nine mile walk.  Our path took us along scenic Beacon Banks.  Once it had a beacon at its summit to alert the country when danger threatened.  It warned of the approach of the Spanish Armada in 1588.  It was a watching point for the Home Guard during World war II.  Now it’s simply a lovely place from which to survey the countryside. Our route took us past three of the prettiest villages in this part of the world – Coxwold, Husthwaite and Kilburn – through woodland, through farmland with views across to the Vale of York, the Hambleton Hills and North York Moors, passing ancient Norman churches we couldn’t call into because it was Sunday.   And the White Horse – often there as a backdrop to the scenery. Here are some picture postcards of our day.

Towards Coxwold, North Yorkshire on Flickr.

I went to Shandy Hall  last week, the beautiful house in Coxwold where Laurence Sterne wrote Vols. 3-9 of Tristram Shandy.

Richard Hurd was Rector of Thurcaston when the book began publication in 1760. He  always kept up with new books but did not think much of this one.  Writing to William Warburton on 18 March 1761 he commented approvingly of Rousseau's La nouvelle Heloise but added: "I wish I could say half so much of our Yorkshire Novelist. Not but that the humour of his fourth vol. makes up for the dulness of the third. The worst is, one sees by both, that he has not the discretion, or perhaps the courage, to follow the excellent advice that was given him, of laughing in such a manner, as that priests and virgins might laugh with him  ".  To William Mason on 30 March he wrote in the same vein: "The 3d Vol. is insufferably dull & even stupid. The 4th is full as humorous as either of the other two. But this broad humour, even at its best, can never be endured in a work of length".  He was going back to Rousseau. On 26 April the following year he wrote to Thomas Balguy about Robert Lowth's Short introduction to English grammar which had just been published and continued to sell well for the next 140 years. "They say" wrote Hurd, with obvious delight, "it outsells Tristram Shandy".

The novel was perhaps a bit too strong for an unmarried country rector, who would not have approved of the kind of life led by his fellow parson. His friend Joseph Cradock recalled in the memoirs he published in 1826 that Hurd "once strongly reproved me from seeing Tristram Shandy in my classical library, and urged its instant removal".

Hurd could not always appreciate a  masterpiece. I couldn't either when I read it at school. But if Hurd had been able to hear the masterly exposition given by Patrick Wildgust, the curator of Shandy Hall, he might have been tempted to give it another go. I certainly shall.