Great Fryup

Great Fryup

Great Fryup Dale

Fryup, thy verdant valley is hemm’d in
With hills all round, that like firm sentinels stand
To shield thee from the intrusion on each hand.
Thine is a dale which should be free from sin:
Here all should feel as if one kith and kin; 5
And, though they e’er despise the folk beyond
Their narrow boundary, should be a bond
Of love be bound together, and thus win
Here that true happiness which can be found
Better than where mankind are closely pent 10
In smoky towns; for God has never meant
His creatures to eschew each sight and sound
Of rural life. We must obey His laws,
Or suffer numerous human woes.

George Markham Tweddell



Notes about Fryup
"is not a village but rather a community scattered across the two dells of Great and Little Fryupdale, which between them cover an area of about six square miles, to the west of Whitby. The land in Fryup lies between 450 and 1,000 ft above sea level and is bounded on three sides by Danby and Glaisdale High Moors and, to the north, by the valley of the Esk. Steep sided valley walls sweep down to narrow valley bottoms where flat fields are scarce and two becks empty into the river Esk. In this large area lives a small population thinly spread amongst isolated farmsteads and cottages.

Applegarth farm, Fryup

For several centuries Fryup was used by the lord of the manor at Danby Castle to graze his own stock and as a source of income by leasing grazing rights. Apart from this ranching the only other activity we have record of was quite extensive iron smelting in the 13th century and these operations are celebrated by names, still existing, such as Furnace Farm, Mine Pit and Cinder Hill. By the middle of the 17th century the Danby estate, then owned by the Danvers family, was sold to meet debts and that part of it containing Fryup was bought by the Dawnay family, later the Lords Downe. It was from this date, 1655, that the dale started to take on its present form with the former pasture land being enclosed and divided up into a number of tenant farms.

'What a peculiar name' is the reaction of many people on first hearing the name Fryup but it simply derives from Freya, a Norse Goddess and 'hop' being an enclosed valley.

The two dales of Fryup meet at Fairy Cross Plain and it was here that a public house and smithy stood. Its liquid offering must have been quite potent for, as the name implies, here dwelt fairies and trolls and the sound of their nocturnal buttermaking filled the night air. Although the pub has long been closed Fryup was, in living memory, a self-sufficient community having a school, a church, two chapels, two shops and with the services of a blacksmith, a tailor, a joiner and a stonesman all resident in the dale. But, as with many other rural communities, all have now been lost, with the Methodist chapel, one of the earliest in the area, being the last to close a few short years ago.

NB
The village information above is taken from the North Yorkshire Village Book, written by members of North Yorkshire Federation of Women's Institutes and published by Countryside Books. Click on the link below to view Countryside's range of other local titles."
Links
Countryside Books (via this site http://www.visitoruk.com/historydetail.php?id=24442&cid=592&f=Whitby