Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
3 INTO THE DALES
KIRKBY STEPHEN
An old market town, with a charter since 1351, Kirkby Stephen gives the impression of
a place that doesn't quite know what it wants to be. It is an overgrown village, tightly
built up for a while, but lacking any real depth, gathering its shape 'and what import-
ance it possesses as much from being on the road to somewhere else as from what it is
in itself'. First impressions are that it is larger than it really is, but the River Eden, slip-
ping quietly round the back of the town, rather sharply defines its eastern boundaries,
while low hill pastures start to rise within a hundred metres of the town's main road, to
the west.
Though lying on the once important route up the Eden valley to Carlisle, the town,
down the centuries, has been overshadowed by its neighbour, Brough, whose massive
castle dominated the strategic junction of the Carlisle route with the road by Stainmore
from Scotch Corner, once the main road from London to Scotland.
Alas, the coming of the railways signalled Brough's ultimate decline, and by 1860 it
was little more than a village, the railway having effectively wiped out the coaching
trade it formerly enjoyed. Bad news for Brough, but goods news for Kirkby Stephen, for
the railways passed close by, and until fairly recently the town could boast the luxury
of two railway stations - now only the Settle-Carlisle line remains.
As Kirkby Stephen expanded, its Luke Fair replaced Brough Hill Fair as a focal point
for cattle and sheep sales, and even when the Beeching axe fell, Kirkby still survived on
the strength of the expanding motor trade, proving a well-sited staging post for con-
voys of coaches taking workers from the northeast on holiday and day trips to Black-
pool. In those heady days of wealth, a café in Kirkby was a licence to print money, and
the whole town, bent on victualling tired and emotional Geordies, stayed bright-eyed,
bushy-tailed, and occasionally legless well into the early hours. Coaches still stop there,
spilling trippers into its gift shops, cafés, market and pubs, while the Coast to Coast
Walk has seen to it that a steady plod of hungry wayfarers finds its weary way into the
town in search of hotels, bed and breakfast, camp sites, and the youth hostel.
Kirkby's church, of St Stephen, is worth a visit. Rather like a small cathedral, it still
bears traces of Saxon and Norman handiwork. In the former county of Westmorland,
St Stephen's was second in size only to the church at Kendal, and has a stately nave
notable for its length and its magnificent 13th-century arcades. Dalesmen have wor-
shipped on this site since Saxon times, and until the early part of the 20th century,
heard curfew rung from the 16th-century tower each evening.
The old town was built for defence against border raiders, with narrow, high-walled
passages and spacious squares into which cattle would be driven in times of danger.
Indeed, those narrow passages provide the lynch pin for at least one local legend. Two
salmon poachers, it is claimed, escaped from the long arm of the law by fleeing in their
Mini down the narrow confines of Stoneshot. The pursuing police, coming from Penrith,
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