24 - Vale of Mowbray : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The Vale of Mowbray is a gently undulating landscape, the broad Vale defined by the higher land of the Yorkshire Dales to the west and North York Moors to the east. There are views over the Vale of Mowbray from this surrounding higher ground, particularly from the higher North York Moors and Cleveland Hills, and views outwards from within the Vale to the surrounding hills. The National Character Area (NCA) is divided from the Tees Lowlands to the north by a minor watershed.

The River Swale flows into the NCA from the Yorkshire Dales (via the Pennine Dales Fringe) and the River Wiske from the shallow watershed with the Tees Lowlands in the north, while Cod Beck rises in the North York Moors. Management in the upper reaches of these rivers and their catchments (in adjacent NCAs) will thus influence their character and condition downstream in the Vale of Mowbray. The rivers flow through the NCA in a south-east direction, the Wiske and Cod Beck joining the Swale which flows on into the Vale of York and ultimately (as a tributary of the Ure, which in turn becomes the Ouse) into the Humber Estuary. The Vale of Mowbray sits over the major Sherwood Sandstone aquifer which extends under the Vale of York.

Historically and to this day, main north-south transport routes have been located through the Vale, principally the A1 and East Coast Main Line, creating strong links to north and south.

Distinct areas

• Upland fringe on eastern boundary rising to North York Moors National Park.

The Vale of Mowbray today

The Vale of Mowbray is similar to its southern neighbour the Vale of York but is distinguished by the relative containment offered by the prominent scarp of the North York Moors and Cleveland Hills to the east and westwards the more gentle foothills of the Pennine Dales. At the Vale fringes the hills offer a very real sense of enclosure which contrasts with the open Vale. This is a gently undulating flood plain landscape, associated with the rivers Swale, Wiske and Cod Beck, sustaining a mixed agricultural base of arable, dairying and livestock rearing which becomes predominantly arable to the south and into the Vale of York.

The landscape is essentially flat or gently undulating, reflecting the relatively less resistant sandstones and mudstones that underlie the Vale, on which rest younger glacial sediments. The mudstones and sandstones come to the surface in the east, where the land begins to rise to the moors. The Sherwood Sandstone, which underlies much of the NCA, is a major aquifer and source of potable water in the region, supplying the Northallerton, Doncaster, Selby and Goole areas and contributing to supplies in Sheffield and Hull. Between the river valleys, low ridges and knolls occur, appearing prominent above flatter surrounding land. These represent a variety of glacial and post-glacial landforms composed of till, sand and gravel, forming moraines, drumlin fields, eskers, outwash fans and river terraces. Flat land in the south and west is underlain by glacial lake deposits.

The soils of the Vale, formed from glacial and alluvial deposits, are generally quite fertile and support arable farming, dairying and livestock production. Cereal production is closely tied to livestock rearing, maize is grown for dairy fodder north of Northallerton, and a large proportion of cereals go to local feed mills. Livestock rearing in the Vale of Mowbray has become more specialised, for example upland beef herds are brought to the Vale and ‘finished’ indoors on cereals, supporting thriving livestock markets in Thirsk and Northallerton. Poultry and pig rearing is practised throughout the area. Oilseed rape is commonly grown in rotation as a break crop in the north of the area; south of Northallerton, potatoes are grown on sandier soils. Fields are medium in size, larger towards the south and west, and hawthorn hedges are the most common field boundaries. Other boundaries are marked by drainage ditches, locally known as ‘stels’, or are fenced. To the north and central area hedges can be substantial and many have been replanted or gapped-up through agri-environment schemes.

Tree cover is generally low (3.3 per cent), although this varies across the NCA. In the flat areas of the Vale woodland is limited in extent, fields are large, bounded by hedges which are low cut and gappy, hedgerow trees and field trees are widely scattered, creating an open, simple landscape. The eastern area, by contrast, has a more wooded feel, created by small game coverts, parklands and substantial hedgerows with hedgerow trees, many of which are thick and well maintained. The eastern area has a visual and physical continuity with the wooded slopes to the North York Moors. There has been scattered new planting along the valley of the River Swale, and some effort to expand lowland broadleaved woodlands. About 11 per cent of the woodland cover is on ancient woodland sites. Few of the woodlands are under formal management agreements.

The Vale of Mowbray is crossed by the River Swale and its tributaries the Wiske and Cod Beck. The Wiske joins the Swale near Thirsk, and Cod Beck joins further south near Topcliffe. The valleys of these watercourses are quite narrow in the north of the Vale but are nevertheless significant in the landscape. Characteristically they are tree-lined and fringed by a belt of rough pasture or scrub, the old flood plain pastures supporting some of the most important and diverse wildlife within the NCA, which has otherwise lost much of its seminatural habitat to agricultural improvements. Further south the flood plains open out and are intensively cultivated, sometimes right to the river’s edge. Here, the rivers are often contained within embankments to protect farmland from inundation, although occasionally the river is able to meander naturally within its channel, depositing gravel banks and fringed with riparian trees and scrub. Notably, in recent years sea lamprey has begun breeding again in Cod Beck above Thirsk, indicating improved water quality.

The main settlement within the area is Northallerton, the county town of North Yorkshire, and the market town of Thirsk in the south. Villages are linear in form, commonly with a village green, and are mostly situated on higher ground above the flood plains. Churches with towers are a prominent and repeated landmark across this rural landscape. Farmsteads are dispersed throughout the area. The vernacular building style is of red brick with pantile roofs, bricks varying slightly in colour depending on the source of local clays. In the north of the area, some brickwork is rendered and walls incorporate cobbles from local glacial deposits. There is some 17th-century and earlier timber frame building. Many old agricultural buildings have been converted to residential use. With the exception of hotspots of high disturbance around transportation corridors and the main settlements, this is a quiet, rural area, sparsely populated.

The most visually prominent historic features are old buildings and churches, and the infrastructure of wartime airfields, all of which can be very visible in this gently undulating landscape. Historically and to this day, major communications and transport routes have been located through this relatively flat, lowland landscape. The A1 (now a motorway for much of its length), the A19 and a main line railway run north-south through the area. There are a number of early military airfields including Leeming, Sandhutton, Topcliffe and Dishforth. Some are now redundant, while others remain in use by the Army and Royal Air Force, or as civilian airstrips. They are usually in quite open areas and the associated structures of roads, runways, fences, hangars and control towers can be highly visible. Settlements at Catterick and Leeming have developed to service military operations at Catterick Garrison and RAF Leeming.

The main areas of economic activity are agriculture, service industry, light industry, and some excavation of flood plain sands and gravels. Horse breeding and training is an important industry within this area, with racecourses at Thirsk and Catterick. Less than 1 per cent of the NCA is classed as being publicly accessible, the Coast to Coast route crosses the Vale, and the area has an average density of 1.1 km of public rights of way per square kilometre.

The landscape through time

The glacial landforms of the Vale of Mowbray are underlain by bedrock of soft Triassic sandstones and mudstones, with Jurassic mudstones and sandstones to the east where the ground rises to the foot of the North York Moors. Material eroded from areas largely to the north of the Vale of Mowbray was carried southwards by the Vale of York ice sheet and deposited across much of the area during the last glaciation. This formed a thick sequence of deposits consisting of till, gravel and sand. Interactions between the ice sheet and these sediments formed drumlins, while sub glacial meltwater streams deposited linear ridges of sand and gravel that now form eskers aligned parallel to the axis of the Vale. The till forms a slightly elevated bench where it overlaps onto the lower flanks of the moors to the east. Meltwater released from the snout of the glacier was impounded within the confines of the Vale as well as by moraines formed during earlier ice advances. The lake deposits accumulated around the glacial topography, creating large, flat expanses of clay (often laminated) and sands forming fan deposits where the meltwater was released into the lake. This produced the heavy clay and light sandy soils that occur in the south and west of the NCA. The post-glacial topography influenced the modern river courses, confining the rivers to narrow flood plains in the north, but allowing them to meander widely across the flatlands formed by lake deposits in the south. At the margin of the North York Moors, Lake Gormire, one of the few natural lakes in Yorkshire, may have been formed by the impounding of a lateral drainage channel by glacial sediments that slipped off the margin of the Hambleton Hills.

Human activity has influenced the Vale’s landscape for at least 10,000 years: stone tools and flint scatters have been discovered dating to the Mesolithic and Neolithic, while bronze-age activity is evidenced by bronze artefacts such as rapiers and axes. Late iron-age and Romano-British settlement can be seen as occasional cropmarks with the outlines of farmsteads, round houses and field systems visible from the air. The Vale was an important transport corridor between north and south prior to the Roman period. Dere Street (today’s A1) was laid out to link Roman forts and towns; smaller settlements and trading posts developed along its length. The Great North Road originated in the medieval period as a trade route between settlements; it became a turnpike road for mail coaches in the 18th century and what we now call the A1 was so named in 1921. The county town of Northallerton developed to service the coaching routes.

The strong pattern of nucleated settlements that we see today developed between the 9th and 13th centuries, by which time much of the former dense woodland on the clay soils had been cleared for farming, with little remaining. Saxon and medieval settlements were located on drier ground. Many were rebuilt as planned villages after the Harrying of the North in 1069 and incursions by the Scots in 1318. A number failed and survive only as earthworks, such as at Birkby, Swainby and Winton; these and many other deserted settlements are characteristic of the area. Dispersed settlement tended to be of medium-to-low density, with some high-status moated sites dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, for example to the north of Northallerton. Motte-and-bailey castles across the area reflect the troubled period of the Anarchy in the 12th century. Some isolated farmsteads developed from the 14th century from grange farms of medieval monastic houses and from shrunken medieval settlements. Woodland and trees provided cover for hunting animals in the 14th century, as shown by the deer parks and hunting lodges at Upsall and Kirby Sigston. The field pattern of Parliamentary enclosure from the 18th century has largely been replaced by modern improved fields in the west and centre; piecemeal enclosure predominates in the east. Farmsteads were built and rebuilt in brick and tile from the mid-18th century, occasionally mixed with cobbles from glacial and fluvial deposits, and rendered, especially in the north of the area. Further enclosure since 1750 has been associated with field sports, with the re-introduction of woodland in small coverts for game.

The area continued to develop as a major transport corridor around the Great North Road, influencing the position and further development of post-medieval coaching towns such as Northallerton and Thirsk. The main Darlington to York railway was built prior to 1845, with many later branch lines, and forms part of the main rail link on the East Coast between Edinburgh and London. Horse racing has been a feature of the area since the first organised meet at Catterick Bridge in 1783, with permanent racetracks being developed at Catterick and Thirsk in 1813 and 1855 respectively, the area long regarded as being a locus for horse breeding and training. Airfields date from the First World War, when they were built to train pilots and assist in the defence of north-east England (for example, the airfield at Catterick), and mostly from post-1934 expansion, for example at Leeming, and the Second World War. Some remain active while others were subsequently developed as industrial areas.

The period since the 1950s has witnessed further agricultural improvements, creating the modern farmed landscape of today. Agri-environment schemes have not had the uptake or impact here of some neighbouring areas, grants for semi-natural habitats being significantly below the national average; however, hedgerows were planted and managed under Countryside Stewardship agreements. Aided by initiatives such as catchment sensitive farming and the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, the uptake of Entry Level Stewardship options has increased in recent years, including the creation of floristically enhanced margins and overwintered stubbles in arable fields. Sand and gravel reserves in the Swale Valley have been worked for aggregates which supply local and regional markets. Light industry has developed around the main market towns and the major communication routes have been improved, most recently the A1 being upgraded to motorway status.