24/10/2026
Wensleydale has been drawing people in for nearly two thousand years.
The Romans came first, building a fort at Bainbridge around AD 90 to watch over the high passes, and Norse settlers followed, leaving their language behind in village names such as Askrigg. In 1145, a community of French monks arrived in search of quiet. They brought with them a recipe for cheese made from ewe’s milk, and when their abbey at Jervaulx eventually fell, the recipe stayed, passed through farmhouse kitchens until a creamery opened in Hawes in 1897.
As the centuries went on, the dale grew into a landscape of castles and market towns. Richard III spent his youth at Middleham, Mary, Queen of Scots was held at Bolton Castle, and villages like Askrigg prospered on markets, knitting and clockmaking.
When the creamery closed in 1992, its former managers bought it back within six months, and a few years later Wallace and Gromit helped carry the cheese far beyond Yorkshire.
It is a valley with its own quiet quirks, too. Wensleydale takes its name from the village of Wensley, rather than the river that runs through it.
Yorebridge House sits in the heart of it all, in a dale that is best enjoyed by those who stay a little longer.
