Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Leave Keld by a rough lane running southeast (signposted 'Kisdon Force'
and 'Muker'), and soon branch left, and down, to cross the Swale by a
footbridge.
Above East Gill Force the onward route is signposted, through a gate and
climbing impressively above Kisdon Gorge, and soon, at a fork, branching
left to the ruins of Crackpot Hall.
CRACKPOT HALL
Crackpot Hall, commanding a superlative position above the Swale, would once have
been a most attractive farmhouse. Alas, subsidence, caused by mining activities,
hastened its demise, an end that came in the 1950s, and an event that must surely
have saddened its occupants, in spite of the no doubt punishing existence that life
among these isolated farming communities entailed. The farmhouse was built by Lord
Wharton for his keeper, who managed the red deer that roamed the wooded hillsides
of the 17th century. Tempting as it may seem so to think, the name of the farm is no
comment on the mental state of its occupants, deriving instead from the 'pot' (i.e. pot
hole or cave) 'of the crows'.
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