Barns and farmhouses

When Grimwith Reservoir was originally constructed, it involved the abandonment and flooding of two hamlets: Grimwith and Gate Up. Nowadays it all seems quite tranquil but the surrounding moorland was at one time mined for coal and lead and the area would have had more activity and inhabitants. There are still barns and farmhouses scattered around. The farmhouse pictured above lay empty for a good forty years, and now it has been renovated; a task not for the faint-hearted, as it lacked services like water and electricity. Some of it is now rented out as holiday accommodation (see HERE).  (The listing rather comically mixes up the nearby village of Hebden with Calderdale's Hebden Bridge! It is a very long way to Hardcastle Crags, mentioned in the blurb - though you won't miss that as there is an abundance of stunning places to explore around Grimwith.)

Perhaps the lines etched onto stone in a nearby wall relate to the farmhouse, or maybe to the submerged hamlets. 

'Ancient sanctuary on rocky shoreline awaits alone the never to return'.

Another notable building on the edge of the reservoir is this 400 year old cruck barn, High Laithe, moved from nearer the water and rebuilt when the reservoir was enlarged in the 1980s. Cruck barns are rarely seen in the Dales now. They have huge wooden A-shaped frames, and this one has a heather thatched roof. By the 17th century the big trees needed to make the frames were becoming scarce and so, as the cruck barns deteriorated, they were gradually replaced by the stone walled, stone roofed barns we see all over the Yorkshire Dales today.

A ruined building by the water's edge is a late 17th century farmhouse, originally part of the hamlet of Gate Up.

The barn above is more typical of the Dales, with its sturdy walls and stone roof. They make photogenic subjects, weatherworn, with muted colours and lots of texture.