Historic Places in North Yorkshire

The city walls of York are the most complete surviving medieval city walls in England, a nearly continuous circuit of approximately three kilometres that encloses the historic centre of the city and can be walked almost in its entirety on the raised wall walk. The walls incorporate elements spanning nearly two thousand years, from the Roman fortress walls of Eboracum through the Viking and Norman periods to the major reconstruction of the medieval circuit in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that created the walls visible today. Walking the complete circuit provides an unparalleled perspective on the Roman origins of York, the medieval development of the city and the architecture of every subsequent period visible within and beyond the wall. York was established as Eboracum, the legionary fortress of the Ninth and then Sixth Legions, in 71 AD, and the Roman walls formed the perimeter of a fortress covering approximately fifty acres on the north bank of the Ouse. The characteristic playing card shape of the Roman fortress is still discernible in the street pattern of the city centre, and large sections of the original Roman wall masonry are preserved in the lower courses of the medieval circuit, most visibly at the Multangular Tower in the Museum Gardens where the Roman polygonal angle tower stands to considerable height. The four principal gateways, known as bars, provide the most impressive architectural features of the wall circuit. Micklegate Bar, the most important gate as the principal entry from the south, bears the arms of the city on its outer face and was traditionally where the heads of executed traitors were displayed, including Richard Duke of York's head in 1461. Bootham Bar, Monk Bar and Walmgate Bar each have their own character and historical associations. The views from the wall walk over the city, the minster and the surrounding roofscape of York are unmatched by any other perspective on this exceptional historic city.

Byland Abbey in the North York Moors National Park is one of the most important and least visited of the great Cistercian abbey ruins of the north of England, the remains of a wealthy medieval monastery whose once-magnificent church represented the largest Cistercian church in England at the time of its completion in the late twelfth century. The abbey was founded in 1177 and rapidly became one of the great houses of the Cistercian order in the north, its church and domestic buildings constructed on an ambitious scale that reflected both the order's wealth and the patronage of the powerful local lords who supported it. The ruins of the abbey church retain enough of their fabric to convey a strong impression of the building's original grandeur. The west front, with its great rose window aperture above the main doorway, is the most impressive surviving element, a composition of early Gothic lancets and round-arched decorative elements that represents the transition from Romanesque to Gothic in late twelfth-century English church architecture. The floor of the church, paved in geometric encaustic tiles of exceptional quality, survives in significant areas and represents one of the finest examples of medieval floor tile work in any English monastic ruin. Byland was the site of a significant and humiliating defeat in 1322 when a Scottish raiding force under Robert the Bruce routed the English army of Edward II who was using the abbey as a temporary residence. The Scots plundered the abbey following their victory, and the episode is both an important historical event and a reminder of how thoroughly the north of England was exposed to Scottish raiding throughout the early fourteenth century. The village of Byland below the abbey provides a picturesque English rural context for the ruins, and the North York Moors landscape surrounding the valley offers excellent walking and further monastic ruins at Rievaulx and Ampleforth within easy reach.

Castle Howard in North Yorkshire is one of the grandest and most imposing country houses in Britain, an enormous baroque palace designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor for the third Earl of Carlisle in the early eighteenth century that dominates its parkland setting with a confidence and authority matched by very few English country houses. The house was begun in 1699 and the main building completed by 1712, with additional wings added later in the century, and the combination of the great domed central hall, the baroque facade and the carefully composed landscape of lakes, temples and architectural features in the park creates one of the most complete examples of baroque country house design in England. Vanbrugh, who had no architectural training before receiving this commission and had previously worked as a playwright and soldier, brought to the project a theatrical imagination and instinct for dramatic effect that resulted in a building quite unlike any other in England. The central cupola rising above the main hall, the long colonnaded wings flanking the entrance courtyard and the confident orchestration of mass and void across the south front create an impression of palatial grandeur that overwhelmed contemporary observers and has continued to inspire admiration across three centuries. The house became internationally famous as the setting for Granada Television's 1981 adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh's novel of aristocratic Catholic life in England, and the association with this television production has brought many visitors who wish to see the location of a story that made a powerful impression on an entire generation of viewers. The house's appearance in numerous other productions since has consolidated its status as a filming location as well as a historical attraction. The grounds of Castle Howard contain a remarkable series of garden buildings including Vanbrugh's Temple of the Four Winds, the Mausoleum designed by Hawksmoor and the Ray Wood woodland garden that contains one of the finest collections of species rhododendrons and ornamental trees in the north of England.