5/29 Danby

After I left the abbey in Whitby, I headed past the holiday traffic to the tiny village of Danby.  I had known that Danby was where my maternal grandmother's maternal grandparents had been married in 1845--making them my great-great-grandparents.  These are a combination of photos taken on the 29th and 30th.

Here is a map of where Danby is so you can visualize it:

 
Sheep hazard.  The roads do not all have fences to keep the sheep in, so they can be anywhere, including in the middle of the road. Most have partly grown lambs with them, and the lambs sometimes don't know enough to get off the road. 

Up on the moors, it was beginning to get really foggy.  Moors, by the way, are created by cutting down the trees for building and firewood and then letting sheep graze.  Sheep do not allow trees to grow, so you get vast areas of treeless land.  The wetting parts are bogs and probably never had many trees, but they did have peat, which the people cut, dried, and burned for fuel after the trees were gone. 

Danby, however, was set down in a really pretty valley with a stream going through. 

I arrived on the 28th and stayed at the Duke of Wellington, about the only thing around.  The only place to find a meal in Danby is in this pub.  There is a tiny bakery and tearoom and a shop which sold pharmacy stuff, although I do not know if it was a real pharmacy.  The sign said "Health Shop." 

The inn was built is 1765.  The inn's website has some very nice photos taken when it was NOT foggy and grey.  I somehow forgot to take photos of the bar and restaurant area, but there are some on the website:  https://dukeofwellingtondanby.co.uk/the-inn

The upstairs hallway was very narrow, and i was beginning to get worried about what my room might look like, but it was pretty nice. 

The next morning, I headed the half-mile down the road to the Moors National Park visitor center. 

Now, this is when it gets interesting.  At the visitor center desk, I chatted with an older lady about hoping to find Danby Church.  She got on her phone and called a friend who had the keys to the church because she was a "reader," meaning that she was a lay person trained to read scripture, as described here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_reader.  

I was put on the phone with her, and she said she was just sitting at home, doing very little and to stop by.  She said her husband had the car, but she would be happy to give me directions and give me the keys so I could go inside and go through the record books for my ancestors baptismal records.  I found her house and suggested she ride with me to the church, so off we went. 

The church was built about a mile out in the country because that is where the wealthy landowner who was paying for most of it wanted it built--near his estate.  It meant his employees and his family had a short walk, but those in the village had a longer walk.  

 The church was built in the 15th Century, but there was another church here before then. 

It used to have a bell tower, but no more.

The big church records books were sitting out on a table, but there were no marriage records there, which surprised her.  However, she suggested I could go to the county records office in Northallerton, about 35 miles away.  

This is a small country church, but it was nice inside, and very much still used today as a Church of England facility. 

The church parking lot was just the end of a country road, but adequate.

Here is a website with more photos and information:  http://moorland-parishes.webplus.net/page8.html

After this, I tried to go out for a drive to see more of the moors, but the heavy fog made it dangerous to even turn around.

Pretty countryside, at least when you can see it.

Part of my route was on a one-lane road, with the usual sheep road-hazards.

Loved the fact, that even though you were on a one-track road, when you came to an intersection, there were road signs.  The intersection roads, by the way, were barely wider than the one-track, but still two-way roads.

 

Tomorrow, I head to Northallerton to the records office!