buried in wool to promote the local trade. He is represented on his
monument neatly packed, and looks so cosy that the bas-relief is
suggestive of the undertaker's advertisement, "Why live and be wretched
when you can be buried comfortably for five pound ten?" In the vestry
there is a splendid set of old oak chairs of which the verger is not a
little proud.
[Illustration: LEATHLEY STOCKS.]
[Illustration: STOCKS AT WESTON.]
A pleasant meadow walk by the riverside leads to Leathley, which has a
Norman church, but can scarcely be called a village, for there is no
inn. A formidable pair of stocks stand ready by the churchyard; but as
nothing stronger than milk can be procured, they have not been worn out
with too much work. Again, at Weston on the other side of the Wharfe
river we come across the roadside stocks (like the usual Yorkshire type,
with two uprights of stone) by the spreading roots of an ancient tree.
Weston Hall is a long low Tudor building, with at one end a broad bay of
three storeys. An old banqueting-house in the grounds is ornamented
with shields of arms; and formerly the windows of it were full of
heraldic stained glass, some of which is now in the windows of the Hall.
From here we went northwards in search of Swinsty Hall, over a lonely
moorland district. The road goes up and up until you are not surprised
when you come to a signpost pointing to "To Snowdon." To the left, you
are told, leads to "Blubberhouses," wherever that may be. For preference
we chose the latter road, and soon got completely lost in the wilds. The
only sign of civilisation was a barn, where we had the fortune to find
an old man who presumably spoke the pure dialect, for we couldn't make
head or tail of it. "Swinsty--ai, you go on ter road until it is," was
the direction he gave, and we went on and until it _wasn't_. At length,
however, after plodding knee deep in marshy land and saturated heather,
we found the object of our search perched in a lonely meadow above a
wide stretch of water. It looked as if it had a gloomy history; and no
wonder that some of the upper rooms are held in awe, for there the ghost
of a person with the unromantic name of Robinson is said to count over
his ill-gotten gains, which he brought down from London in waggons when
the Plague of 1666 was raging. He had the good fortune to escape
contamination, and once back with his plundered wealth he meant to have
what nowadays we call "a good time"; but the story has a moral, for it
got winded abroad how he got his gold, and nobody would have anything to
do with him or his money, and by the irony of fate he had to spend the
rest of his days in trying to wash away the germs of infection.
[Illustration: SWINSTY HALL.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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