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The picture shows part of a document that was presented to the Wetherby Quarter Sessions Court on 14th January 1812. The document describes ‘a certain highway between Embsay in the Parish of Skipton in the said Riding and Sandy Beck through Crookrice upon the Public Highway between Skipton and Rilston for the length of four thousand six hundred and twenty yards’, then referring to a map. The 1861 version of the map has not survived but the approximate route is shown on the modern OS. This Quarter Sessions record provided confirmation of the earlier existence of a road between Embsay and Sandy Beck, which we had expected having found a note written on a copy of the 1760 enclosure map for Embsay Pasture.
If you had wanted to go to Rylstone before 1861 you had three choices of roads. You could follow the narrow Brackenley Lane, along the same route as today, but there may not have been a bridge. Or there was a footpath following an early trackway through Hilltop Farm, alongside Clarkes Farm, through Hagg Farm to reach the Skipton-to-Rylstone road at None-go-bye Farm. Or thirdly, you could walk along Pasture Lane, turn off to Intake Farm and follow probably the most ancient route, across the fields, reaching Sandy Beck near to the old toll-gate on the Skipton-Rylstone Road. (see map) This route through Intake Farm was probably a continuation of the road from Halton East and Eastby through Embsay Kirk to Rylstone which the canons of Bolton Priory used to reach their sheep farms in Malham, and which packhorses and carts brought tonnes of wool and cheese back to the priory. From Sandy Beck Bar, the old Skipton to Rylstone road followed the steep, rough, stony track, now shown as a footpath, leading close by Norton Tower. (The modern route of the B6265 was only built in the late 19th century.)
The application made to the Quarter Sessions in 1812 was to ‘stop-up’ the route through Intake Farm and make the Brackenley Lane route the only public road from Embsay to meet the Skipton-Rylstone Road. The reason given for closing this road was because the Intake Farm route was ‘extremely narrow’ and ‘full of Glens and Quick Sands’. But, as such applications were always presented to the Quarter Sessions by those in authority, the cynic might see another reason.
For centuries before 1812, and for some decades after, the maintenance of roads was carried out by the local villagers. The owners of the lands through which the road ran were responsible for clearing out ditches and maintaining the road. The 4 620 yards (2.7 miles, 4.2km) of road in question passed through lands owned by the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl of Thanet. They would have have used the manpower from their tenant farms in Embsay and Crookrise to carry out road maintenance. The ‘Glens and Quick Sands’ described appear to indicate that little maintenance work had actually been carried out, the ‘Glens’ probably being potholes and the ‘Quick Sands’ probably being the muddy morasses resulting from lack of drainage.
There are many instances in the court records where villages or individual land-owners are fined because they had not kept the roads in repair and many court orders were issues instructing that the landowners repair roads, ditches and the walls alongside the roads. A law of 1773 permitted the ‘stopping up’ of roads where another, better, route could be provided, which had to be agreed by two of the Justices of the Peace which sat on the Quarter Sessions Court Bench.
The two JPs involved in this case were Matthew Wilson (the father of the future Skipton MP), a solicitor from Eshton Hall near Gargrave, and Johnson Atkinson Busfeild who lived at Carleton and they ordered that the old road through Intake Farm should cease to be a right of way and that the land be sold to the Duke of Devonshire and Earl of Thanet. A rate of ‘no more than 6d in the pound’ was to be levied on all landowners in Skipton and Embsay to improve Brackenley Lane (Bracken Lane as it was named in the order) to become the main road to the Skipton -Rylstone road.
All of us who nowadays regularly travel along Brackenley Lane might question how much road widening was carried out. The walls on either side of the Lane on the Embsay side of the the railway bridge do not appear to be a consistent style (The railway bridge was built many decades later). A consistent style of wall would indicate a single widening event, so it is probable that no widening work took place. It is probable, however, that the bridge over Eller Beck was built at this time. Historic England believe that the bridge (which they call Tarn Moor Bridge) was built in the 18th century, but the evidence of this Quarter Session Order make it much more likely to have been built in 1812, or thereabouts. The bridge was probably paid for by the ‘6d in the pound’ rates that were collected across Embsay and Skipton. The remainder of the road across Tarn Moor to the B6265 was probably also constructed at this time. Messrs Wilson and Atkinson-Busfield stated that the change in the highway was ‘to be binding and conclusive to all persons whomsoever’ citing that ‘no complaints or appeal having been made’.
Who benefitted from this change? After the road closure, the Duke and the Earl didn’t have to maintain a road, which it looks like they didn’t do anyway. They would have been expected to pay the going rate for the 2.7 miles of land they acquired, which would have been added to the road widening and bridge construction fund. The Duke and Earl achieved greater privacy for their lands with no members of the public now permitted access. (In the 19th century the Duke is recorded elsewhere as trying to restrict travel across his lands and the moorland)
After the closing of the Intake road, a villager travelling from Elm Tree Square to Rylstone would have to travel one mile further, although the condition of the Skipton to Rylstone road was improving as it became the main road to Upper Wharfedale. The villagers had a high-quality bridge constructed for their carts to cross over Eller Beck.
Messrs Wilson and Atkinson-Busfield specified that the change in the highway was ‘to be binding and conclusive to all persons whomsoever’ citing that ‘no complaints or appeal having been made’, so it seems that the new road was adopted by the villagers without any issues.
But the road, although closed, lived on in romantic fiction. In his book ‘Priscilla of Good Intent’ (1909), the Edwardian writer Halliwell Sutcliffe had clearly walked the road. He frequently used local places with minor name changes and his lead character Priscilla, travelling home with her suitor from a day out to Kettlewell, got off the coach at Sandy Beck Bar (he calls it ‘Willow Beck Bar’) to walk home.
“Gaunt had opened the gate, and Cilla and he were loitering down the lane which once had been the highway, but which now was grazed by sheep and cattle. There was a curious privacy about this abandoned road, a charm which haunts neglected thoroughfares.”
I wonder what can still be found today.
Chris Lunnon. Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group. March 2025
Note from Dilys Williamson. 1962 Brackenley lane was a gated road with grass down the middle.
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