To coincide with Valentine’s Day we recommend some local spots with love connections that are worth an outing
Small but perfectly formed, St Valentine Abbey in Sewerby. Image: Paul Kirkwood St Valentine Abbey, Bridlington
There’s no church dedicated to St Valentine in the UK but there is an abbey albeit a somewhat small, ruined one. It’s situated in the Bondville model village at Sewerby near Bridlington. Look closely and elsewhere in the village you’ll find a wedding taking place for a further frisson of romance. Built in 1987 and complete with harbour, castle, three pubs, canal and 900 hand painted figures, the one-twelfth scale village is charming in an old fashioned sort of way and provides a perfect afternoon out for all ages, ice creams afterwards obligatory. England has never been portrayed merrier. I’d like to be shrunk and live there.
Nellie was a dairymaid from Aberford about a century ago. Her suitor, miner Vic from Garforth, used to pass through Parlington woods on his walk to meet her. As a sign of his love he grafted three beech saplings together to form the letter N. So sweet. The tree won the Tree of the Year competition in 2018 following a nomination by Vic and Nellie’s grandson. The tree is on Parlington Lane, a track that follows a former railway line leading south-west from Aberford. Pass under a bridge and you’ll soon see it, with an information panel, on the right. The grid reference is grid ref SE 424361.
No one knows who the Two Lovers are but locals like to think of them as Yarm’s Romeo and Juliet. You’ll find them, carved in stone and lying side by side on a tomb cover on the left of the entrance porch in St Mary Magdalene Church. Detail on the clothing suggests that the stonework is 14th century. The Two Lovers were discarded into the Tees along with the font by Roundheads during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century but were later recovered. A footpath that leads around the giant meander of the Tees is named True Lovers Walk. If the church is closed follow contact details provided on the door.
Legend has it that Thomas Ferris of Glaisdale fell in love with a rich girl called Agnes Richardson who lived across the then unbridged River Esk. Tom declared that he’d become wealthy enough to build a bridge over the river, at the same time pleasing his sweetheart’s father who deemed him a beggar and unsuitable. Tom went to sea to make his fortune but was prevented from bidding farewell to Agnes as a flood made the river impossible to cross. Tom became a sailor and ship-owner and Lord Mayor of Hull and did, indeed, build the bridge, inscribing it with his initials and the date, 1619, and married Agnes.
Tucked away in the otherwise gently undulating Marsden Moor, Pule Hill has a stature belying its modest 437 metre elevation. The view from the summit includes the heart- shaped Redbrook Reservoir. Stride away from the path for about 100 metres to the north-east for fine views over Marsden. The big novelty up here, though, is the abandoned quarry workings and one of the Stanza Stones within them. Sited at six locations across the South Pennines watershed, the stones were carved 10 years ago and feature verse about water composed by poet laureate and Marsden man Simon Armitage. Also look out for the poet’s bench nearby.
The Top Withens farmhouse near Haworth, possibly the inspiration for Wuthering Heights, must be the most famous literary love spot in Yorkshire. Just as intriguing is another but lesser known Brontë-related property, North Lees Hall, just a mile south of the Yorkshire border in Derbyshire. The late 16th century tower house, regularly visited by Charlotte Brontë, is thought to have inspired Thornfield Hall in her Jane Eyre novel. The eponymous character falls in love with Rochester who lives in the hall. It has the castellated roof of the fictional Thornfield, not to mention the same bleakly beautiful setting, made all the more so on a crisp winter’s day.
Situated in Carperby, this is the pub where the real James Herriot (aka Alf Wight) spent his honeymoon with Helen. He wrote: ‘We spent it tuberculin testing, partly because the work was overdue and partly because we didn’t have the money to do anything more exotic. Our bedroom, with its brass bedstead, looked over the old roofs of the village houses across the Ure to the hills beyond and I still feel that wherever Helen and I might have spent our honeymoon we could not have found greater beauty.’
James and Helen married at Thirsk church in November 1941 and spent the evening at the cinema in Richmond before arriving at the Wheatsheaf.
Love Square is a pop-up pocket park in Sheffield city centre designed by students at the University of Sheffield and Prof Nigel Dunnett who also designed landscape spaces for
Olympic Park in London. Love Square is an element of the Grey to Green initiative which is transforming redundant road space into a network of public spaces, sustainable drainage and urban rain gardens. It’s named after John Love, a draper, who formed Spear & Love in 1760, later to become tool manufacturers Spear & Jackson.
Combine a visit with a foretaste of summer at the Winter Garden, the largest urban glasshouse in Europe, home to more than 150 species of plants from around the world.
