THE VALE OF MOWBRAY - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 90

previously was necessary here. Here we bid farewell to the Swale, which has been
our companion since we first met it near Keld. It slips away to join the Ure, remaining in
the distance for a while longer, though we never again tramp its banks.
Follow the path through the site of a former gravel works, finally emer-
ging onto a surfaced track. Turn right along this, and then take the first
turning on the left, a broad track leading to the edge of Bolton-on-Swale.
At the end of the track the route meets the B6271. Go right for a short
distance, and then left, near the village pump, to head for the village
church, St Mary's.
ST MARY'S, BOLTON-ON-SWALE
St Mary's Church is a delightful structure, its clock tower constructed of exquisitely
hued sandstone blocks. Brothers of the Abbey of St Mary's in York originally built the
church in the early 14th century. There were certainly earlier churches - Saxon and
Norman - on this site, and what remained of those was incorporated into the present
Gothic design.
But the principal feature of interest here is the monument in the churchyard, ded-
icated to one Henry Jenkins, whose claim to fame was that from his birth at nearby
Ellerton in the year 1500, he lived to be 169, dying at Ellerton in 1670. Henry made
his living from salmon fishing and thatching cottages, but he remembered being sent
as a lad of 12 with a cartload of arrows to meet the Earl of Surrey's army on its march
northwards to the Battle of Flodden (1513).
The churchyard monument is a fitting tribute to the man, even if the mason did rather
miscalculate his word spacing.
Bolton-on-Swale church