Chapel-le-Dale, North Yorkshire: the making of an upland landscape

The Chapel-le-Dale valley on the north-western side of Ingleborough and the Ribblehead area now appear to be under-populated with an economy largely based on livestock farming. Currently, only eleven farms are operational but at one time there were nearly forty. Much of the study area was managed by Furness Abbey from vaccaries and subsidiary bercaries and lodges, most of which still survive in the landscape in one form or another. Judging from surname evidence in archival sources, monastic tenants established themselves after the Dissolution as customary manorial tenants developing the mix of improved enclosed pastures, unimproved common fellside grazing, and stinted pastures, that are the essence of today's landscape. Visible in the landscape, too, is archaeological evidence of farming and settlement in the early medieval period, some of which has been investigated by excavation in the area outside former monastic lands. This article draws on archival research, and the techniques of field and landscape archaeology, to build up a picture of how the area developed, and changed, over the centuries.