Myers Bottom cowhouse Keld to Ivelet (low level variant) This is one of several traditional cowhouses belonging to the Rukins Great Rampsholme meadow who own the campsite in Keld. It’s the cowhouse first one you see on the right hand-side Coast-to-Coast cowhouses of the path leading east out of Keld. It’s A short detour signposted off the main unusual because it has a rather riverside route beyond Rampsholme farm elaborately carved datestone ‘IA DA brings you to this recently restored As you walk through Upper RA 1687’. Most of these cowhouses cowhouse. A generous legacy along with along the Coast-to-Coast path you will date to the eighteenth and nineteenth fundraising efforts by the Dales come across many hundreds of little centuries, so this datestone must have Millennium Trust has meant that we have been reused, possibly from a been able to help the owner of this stone field barns sitting in the meadows demolished house nearby. eighteenth century cowhouse save it from and alongside old farmsteads. collapse. Inside the cowhouse you should Nowadays they are mostly redundant Crackpot Hall be able to make out the wooden stalls or but they are reminders of a farming This deserted house with its stunning buses with their wooden boarded dividers, past that is still vivid in the memories of views south towards was once called boskins. The buses are divided local people. the centre of a thriving farm. William from the hay mew by a wooden skelbuse Calvert went to work there when he or boosehead. Even the iron tethering first left home. rings for the cows remain, attached to As part of the Every Barn Tells a Story their wooden posts called rudsters. Above project, we’ve recorded some of these “The house was in the middle, at one the buses is a wooden baux or hay loft memories and also researched the end there was the cow byre which you where green hay was put to help it dry out. had two or three cows in, at the other history of these buildings. This little end there was the place for the horses leaflet is a taster of some of that work. and for coals and things like that, then We hope you enjoy it as you continue a little loft above and that’s where the on your way. young sheep, where you wintered… till spring…your hoggs… hoggs had gone out by then so they [ewes having To find out more, difficulty lambing] just came back in… I visit the Keld Resource Centre used to have a little old motorbike that I or our project blog used to go round land on from cow everybarn.yorkshiredales.org.uk building to other buildings and dog used to ride on t’tank…and it loved it.” William Calvert (83), formerly of Crackpot Hall, then Greenses farm The group was where the cow muck collected, to be shovelled out of the muck hole ready to be spread on the surrounding haymeadow. The truffs or throughstones are long stones binding together the inner and outer skin of the walls, usually projecting in parallel lines on the outside of the cowhouse. “Cowhouses in the field, or a cow’us, not barns in Swaledale” “You never said you were off to barn, it was off to cow’us!” Anne Guy (nee Thornborrow) (65) formerly of Frith farm & Margaret Fawcett (74) (nee Alderson), formerly of Skeugh Head farm

The Swaledale ‘cow’us’ Ravenseat to Keld there wasn’t enough pressure to bring it right up to the house, so it only came half

The little cowhouses, dotted about Upper way up, so we had to carry all our water Swaledale, once formed part of a self- Ravenseat from half way down this hill…when I was sustaining farming system. Within living The word ‘seat’ comes from the Old small, they got a pump so we had to memory, cattle were still being housed in Norse word ‘sætr’ meaning summer pump it into this trough outside for the these buildings over the winter, sheltered grazing or dwelling. In the late eight cows…it was hard work, you know, when from the worst of the weather. They were century AD, when Scandinavian settlers you’ve got to fill a whole trough.” fed on hay grown in the surrounding started arriving in Swaledale there would meadows and stored next to them in the Elsie Metcalfe (nee Scott) (83), have been wolf packs roaming these hills formerly of Park House farm cowhouse haymew. and so farmers would either send a spare member of the family to live up on the Keld Green This farm lay next to Keld Lodge, you’ll “We’ve always had them, these hillside with the cattle all summer or make buildings… Used to have cows in… They sure they were brought down to the safety pass it just before the turn off down into were tied up by the neck…chained, of the farmstead every night. Ravenseat Keld village. Billy Hutchinson’s dad ran a weren’t they, round the neck… And next farm must have grown from one of these small dairy herd from here: door there was hay…there was hay at summer grazing camps. “Me dad was farming from there ..just one side and mebbe on top, on baux, hay on that as well, above the cows, there Park House (Swaledale Yurts) milk cows and followers ..three or four was a little bit.” Sidney & Betty Park House lies just past Park Bridge on cow’usses all round, on Kisdon Side, on Reynoldson (82 & 81), of Thwaite the left hand side of the road. It was once Willy Greens, Mary Field…“Well, we had a small farm. The bunk barn attached to stock in them all, but I don’t think there is the back of the farmhouse was where the mebbe today, but we had stock in house milk cows were kept during the them ..hay mews, aye, was all loose hay winter. Elsie Metcalfe remembers it well: then … swept in by ‘oss, very first instance, and then we had old land “…there were the cows and a little place wagons ..before the tractors came…At for the calves …and the hay mew …we finish we were milking ten [cows], which made butter and cheese …[milking] twice was a lot for Keld Green [for two men]… a day, morning and night...[they] had to we used to put quite a bit of milk out in be let out into the yard [to drink] ..we had them days ..it went to to Express no water supply, the water we had came Dairy.” from a rock across the Swale, came from Billy Hutchinson (81), formerly of the a hillside, and it came down one side, but Picture courtesy of Billy Hutchinson Cathole Inn & Keld Green farm