Guest post by @RoryFfoulkes
As first impressions go, the one you get when arriving into Knaresborough by train is pretty monumental.
The four-span stone viaduct 78ft the train pulls across before resting in the station high above the River Nidd gives you a spectacular vista of the ruined castle the infamous knights rode out from to assassinate Thomas Becket and of a chess board of balconied properties – seemingly gorged into ancient rock – leaning precariously over the waters below.
Somewhat surprisingly, no well-known painting of Knaresborough as viewed from this perspective leaps to mind, the reason possibly being that the stone viaduct built to carry a branch of the then Leeds & Thirsk Railway wasn’t completed until sometime after 1848 (the first effort collapsed into the River Nidd); too late, therefore, for Turner or Constable to have taken a crack at it.
I’d convinced myself that John Sell Cotman had painted the viaduct and the medieval town rising above it from somewhere around the waterfront beneath the castle in his grand style and then thought how wonderfully Turner would have realised such a landscape – but it appears imagination has run away with itself in this instance. Nevertheless, even the most unskilled of photographers is able to easily capture the scene arrestingly with their iPhone or similar and show it off to wowed friends and family later.
The problem with Knaresborough is that, as with so many things, appearances can be deceptive.
Of course Knaresborough is an ancient town filled with the sort of intriguing nooks and crannies you won’t find in relatively modern neighbouring Harrogate; but nobody seems to be making an effort to help it fulfil its vast potential. Indeed, one sometimes wonders – ludicrously, perhaps – whether agencies are actively at work trying to hold Knaresborough back lest it should deprive Harrogate and nearby York of some of its tourists and therefore income.
Nonsense? Mischief-making? Utter codswallop? Maybe. Probably. But compare Knaresborough’s tired high street – littered with charity shops, empty units, unwelcoming-looking pubs (Carriages, a cosy wine bar at the brow of the hill serving hearty fare and Yorkshire tapas, being an honourable exception) and scruffy chain stores – with Harrogate’s cafes, boutiques and boulevards, and you begin to wonder.
Even the ancient and charming-looking market square, with its timber-clad building and creepy statue of the celebrated road builder Blind Jack, offer nothing, leaving the visitor sorely disappointed with its run-down tea shoppes, bookies and gift shops.
More troubling, arguably, is the galling lack of cultural provision on offer in Knaresborough.
Walking down the steep steps past Knaresborough Castle to the beloved waterfront the other day, my nearly-three-year-old daughter spoke excitedly of princesses and fairies and I gave a no doubt ill-advised, self-indulgent account of a Cockney archbishop defending himself valiantly but in vain against the four infamous knights that rode out from Knaresborough to assassinate him. The crooked, bare-leafed tree bent over double like a conspiring witch at her cauldron alongside the castle inspired ideas in my wife and I of a promenade theatre style version of Macbeth; and then of a Hamlet among the ruins themselves. And yet nothing ever seems to occur here: there are no storytellers offering tours of the castle ruins; there is no theatre; and there are no indications anywhere that the castle is the source of a rich, fabled history.
There are galleries in Knaresborough, but none that you would even mention in the same breath as the much-missed Minster Fine Art gallery in York or even the council-run but well-curated Mercer Gallery in Harrogate. And if there are, why don’t we know about them?
That’s not to say that there aren’t people in Knaresborough earnestly trying to make a difference.
There is Henshaws, the craft-cum-arts centre and charity for the blind, which probably suffers in terms of outside visitors from its position away from the town centre itself on a tight turning along a busy road. The celebrated Bed Race, too, brings visitors from all over Yorkshire to the town in early June. There is the long-running FEVA festival, held in late summer every year. And there are people that have campaigned and worked hard to keep The Frazer Theatre running, albeit with Am-Dram.
But where is the funding? The continuity of high quality, vibrant cultural venues and events? The perpetual buzz? Where are the cultural entrepreneurs with the desire and wherewithal to fashion Knaresborough into a viable cultural destination?
My personal attitude towards Knaresborough is a positive and optimistic one. It’s difficult not to hold the place in great affection.
For one thing, if there is a more pleasant place to take a stroll in the whole of Europe than Knaresborough waterfront, then I’d like to hear of it.
Reached either from the aforementioned steps down from the castle or else from the crossing near (the greatly over-priced, sadly) Mother Shipton’s Cave, the river walk encompasses ice cream stalls, dog walkers, boats for hire, cafes, dubious antique shops, quaint B&Bs, myriad remarkable properties of varying style and vintage, a church built into the rockface and farm animals. And, if you persist with it, St Robert’s Cave, to which medieval pilgrims would flock to seek spiritual guidance from and be healed of physical ailments by the holy man and hermit.
There is, too, the newly refurbished and really quite fantastic Half Moon Inn, which will be serving food come spring, and The Dropping Well across the way. The World’s End at the beginning of the walk has a great beer garden and – as part of an extremely informal group of pubs and bars owned and run by Simon Colgan that includes Harrogate’s famous Blues Bar and The Duck ‘n’ Drake in Leeds – hosts high quality live music nights. The George & Dragon, known locally as Top ‘ouse (as in ‘House’), just around the corner going back into town from the Half Moon is a great place to watch rugby, if that’s your thing. Back in town, So! Bar and Eats offers a family-friendly atmosphere in which to enjoy burgers, fajitas, hot sandwiches, thrice-cooked chips, modern salads, beer and coffee from the comfort of roomy leather sofas. There is much that is good in the town if you have an idea where to look – but a paltry number of people do, it seems.
It would be horrible to see Knaresborough robbed of its ruggedness and become less higgledy-piggledy: and yet it cannot be denied that Knaresborough needs serious investment; both in terms of time spent thinking about how it can be improved and, naturally, money. Its disjointed parts, currently so much greater than its sum, need stitching together as part of a united vision driven by a passion to awaken Knaresborough – its grand and noble history; its rough-and-ready authenticity and ghosts defiant in the face of slightly-sneering cultivated Harrogate – and transform it from the current exhausted, neglected and sad state into the pulsating fantasy it could so easily be conjured into.