Rabbits, Russians and the Yorkshire Dales

This is Lady Hill - it has an interesting story attached to it and is a much loved Wensleydale landmark, less familiar from this vantage point. If you've ever driven from Aysgarth to Hawes, you'll have seen Lady Hill on the right hand side going towards Hawes.

The distinctive round hill with a crown of trees rises from the River Ure flood plain below. The hill is really a drumlin, a perfect half-buried egg shape formed by a moving glacier. The Scots pine trees which top the hill were planted to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Look closer and you'll also see there's a tumbledown wall around the hill. Was this just a fanciful endeavour by a landowner to clear the surrounding land? Why did the trees need to be fenced in? According to local stories, the wall was built thanks to the Normans and the last Russian Czar...

"Curiouser and curiouser", I hear you say. And actually you'd be right - there's a rabbit connection too. We can thank the Normans for bringing rabbits to Yorkshire, where they were bred for food and fur. Silver-haired rabbits were particularly prized for their fur. It's said that local game dealer Frank Sayer-Graham (who was responsible for the building of Aysgarth Rock Garden) made a good living from breeding and selling silver-haired rabbits to line car coats. He may even have supplied the last Czar of Russia with rabbit furs.

The rabbits were bred and kept within a walled warren at the top of Lady Hill. The high wall prevented wild rabbits from interbreeding with the silver-haired ones and it was easier to catch rabbits from within a relatively small walled enclosure. The furs were probably carried off to eager buyers via the nearby Wensleydale Railway. Some also say that drovers used the enclosure as a safe place to rest with their beasts.

It’s thought that Lady Hill may be named after Lady Anne Clifford, who inherited extensive land in the Yorkshire Dales. She was a controversial woman who achieved a great deal at a time when men really ruled the world. But that’s a story for another day…

Image by Guy Carpenter