The Kings Arms Hotel, Askrigg © Si Homfray about Turner’s at This isaTurner Trails downloadable guide.You candiscover more The locations where Turner spent in Yorkshire Where Turner Stayed www.yorkshire.com/turne the night... r .

Bolton Castle © Si Homfray Where Turner Stayed in Yorkshire As JMW Turner watches his horse being stabled at the inn after a long day’s ride, his thoughts don’t turn to dinner and a rest. Turner, an artist who squeezes every last glimmer of light from the day, plans where he will sketch during the evening. This enthusiasm to make the most of every day characterises Turner’s visits to Yorkshire. Almost every time he reaches a new place for the night, he is out exploring his surroundings as the light starts to fade. Yet the hotels and inns Turner stayed at were vital to the success of his sketching tours of the county, and without them he would not have been able to make hundreds of drawings during punishing schedules. We are fortunate to know some of the towns and Useful Info... villages where Turner spent the night, and even the inns Sleeping with Turner and hotels he stayed in. One of these was the timber- You can spend the night in framed Black Horse Inn in some of the Yorkshire inns York, where Turner stayed for Turner stayed at. These a few days in 1797 while he include the Green Dragon, waited for Edward Lascelles Hardraw and The Kings to call him to Harewood Mill Gill Force - Turner visited Mill Gill Head, Richmond. House. We can presume Force while staying in Askrigg Turner stayed at the Black Image reproduced by permission of the Horse because of a clue in his very first Tate Gallery © Tate, London 2010 sketch of York. Made outside the inn, it shows the view down Pavement towards All Saints Church. A three-storey timber building on the left of the street has a sign on its first floor where Turner has written ‘Black H’ – Black Horse. His friend and fellow artist, Thomas Girtin, had drawn a watercolour of the same scene the year before and may have recommended the Black Horse to Turner.

York Minster, York

York Minster, York

Skipton Castle Turner sketched Pavement and the Black Horse again when he visited York in 1816. Sadly, the Black Horse was demolished some time during the subsequent Hardraw Force years but its location can be identified.

www.yorkshire.com/turner If you would like to visit the site of the Black Horse, you can Did you know? explore Turner’s viewpoints of York with a self-guided York’s French Footpath podstroll, a digital mini-book which is viewed on an iPod York’s first paved street was or mobile phone, available to built in the medieval period. download from the Turner Trails It was, and still is, called website. Pavement after the French for paved way. The Kings Head Hotel, Richmond One hotel that has survived since Turner stayed there in 1797 is The Kings Head Hotel in Richmond. Built in 1717 as a ‘gentleman’s townhouse’, it was the largest and most modern hotel in town at the time and Turner is believed to have described it as “the finest in .” He used the hotel as his base for exploring the town and its surroundings for views of the castle and nearby . You can explore Turner’s Richmond viewpoints with an audio tour beginning at The Kings Head. Download the tour from the Turner Trails website to listen on an iPod, mp3 player or mobile phone. Leyburn Market Place, Leyburn Richmond Castle © Si Homfray

Middleham Castle

Turner returned to Richmond and probably The Kings Head Hotel again in 1816. He was making an extensive tour of Yorkshire to work on sketches for ‘A General History of the County of York’ by Thomas Dunham Whitaker. An ambitious illustrated history of the county, it was never completed after the author died and the publisher baulked at the huge costs. We can follow part of Turner’s 1816 tour of Yorkshire through the Interesting Fact... places he stayed at after he left St Agatha’s Abbey, Easby, Yorkshire Farnley Hall, near Otley, the home Inn for the Night © The Trustees of the British of his friend Walter Fawkes. Fawkes Museum and his family joined Turner for 18th century inns looked his tour of Wharfedale, beginning after more than just people. in Skipton, where they most likely In those days, inns had stayed in the recently refurbished stables because people Black Horse, before moving on to travelled by horse or horse- Malham via Browsholme. drawn stagecoach – if they weren’t walking.

www.yorkshire.com/turner After a visit to Gordale Scar on the 25th July, Mrs Fawkes wrote in her diary that they ‘returned home in heavy rain. Turner went on a sketching tour.’ Turner began this next stage of his tour in Kettlewell, where his choice of inns was between the Blue Bell Inn and the Racehorses Hotel. As was typical of Turner, he stabled his horse, took refreshments and was off to sketch. His destination on this late summer’s evening was Dow Cave, a major system of underground caverns about 1.5 miles away, where he tried drawing by candlelight. Malton

The next morning he sketched Kilnsley Crag before crossing Did You Know? over Stake Pass into Wensleydale. He stayed the night of the 26th at the Kings Arms in Askrigg, a quiet village of tall All in a Day’s Journey houses and a cobbled market square. This time, after stabling Today you can easily drive across his horse, he went on a walking tour to sketch the area’s Yorkshire in a few hours. When Turner waterfalls, taking in Yorebridge, Colby Falls, Mill Gill Force visited, the best he could hope for by and Whitfield Gill Force before returning to the Kings Arms horse was 25 to 30 miles a day. He for the night. regularly managed over 20, even while The following day he rode to Hardraw Force, a well-known stopping to sketch. attraction of the time, where he did not have to go far from his accommodation to find his viewpoints. The Force is in the grounds of the Green Dragon Inn where Turner slept on the 27th. He probably spent the next night in Aysgarth, and sketched the falls here too, before spending the 29th July travelling once more to Richmond. During a stopover of two nights in The Kings Head Hotel, Turner revisited many of the places he had sketched in 1797, before heading north into Durham. Turner returned to Yorkshire in August, staying at Farnley Hall before going on a further week-long sketching tour towards the end of the month. He stopped over at Boroughbridge, a busy staging post on the Great North Road, where he had a choice of inns serving the many stagecoaches passing through. The bridge that gave the town its name appears in four Turner sketches, while views of Kettlewell nearby Ellenthorpe Hall were drawn twice. At the beginning of September he stayed in Leyburn on his route from Middleham to Constable Burton.

Interesting Fact...

Long-distance Commuter It took two days to reach Yorkshire by stagecoach from London in Turner’s time. And that was by fast coach along the Great North Road, with an overnight stop in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

Boroughbridge © Si Homfray

www.yorkshire.com/turner One of the last Yorkshire hotels we know Turner stayed at was the Talbot Hotel in Malton. He passed through Malton on his way from Interesting Fact... Scarborough to Farnley Hall sometime between 1816 and 1818, where he sketched a view of a church, houses and the hotel from Turner’s Host somewhere near the hotel’s garden. Turner’s host at York in Farnley Hall was the place Turner stayed the most while in Yorkshire. 1797 was John Underwood. He regularly visited the Fawkes family, who kept a room ready for He was innkeeper of the him, until Walter died in 1825. Turner rarely visited Yorkshire again, but Blackhorse Inn and made a by this time and over almost thirty years, the county had given him Freeman of York the same the inspiration to become the ‘painter of light’. The innkeepers and year Turner stayed at the inn. hoteliers certainly played their part in ensuring Turner made the most John was married in 1798 in of his Yorkshire sketching tours and developed into one of ’s St Crux, the church that was greatest artists. opposite the inn. Staying with Turner in Yorkshire Check the Turner Trails website for information about the places where Turner stayed while he visited Yorkshire. You can click on the following links to go straight to the web page. Askrigg and the Kings Arms, Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Dow Cave, Hardraw Force, Leyburn, Malton and the Talbot Hotel, , The Kings Head Hotel, Richmond and York Minster. You can find Turner Trails benches at the following places where he stayed: Askrigg and the Kings Arms, Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Constable Burton, Kettlewell (for Dow Cave), Hardraw Force, Leyburn, Skipton Castle, The Kings Head Hotel, Richmond.

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