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| Askrigg's own Skeldale House |
After visiting Aysgarth Falls, our next stop was the village
of Askrigg. Compared with everywhere
else we had visited on this trip, Askrigg was a welcome respite from everyday
English life. You could park virtually
anywhere, for as long as you wanted, for free.
Hardly any cars passed as we walked through the town. Only a few people walked the quiet street. The road climbed a gentle rise, and we passed
pubs, shops, and homes. And then,
suddenly, there it was: the Skeldale House from “All Creatures Great and
Small.”
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| Hmm.... This doesn't look like James Herriot's car. |
It seemed almost too good to be true. I had imagined I would have to hunt it
down. But now, the house sat just as the
road curved to the left opposite the village church. Not only that, but it was For Sale! I headed across the street, and peered
through the front door windows. One look
told me that the interior looked nothing like the TV show had depicted. The rooms looked in disrepair, neglected, and
faded posters hung on a bulletin board in the hall. I walked to a candy store next door, and
asked the man there about the house. The
six-bedroom house had recently been used as a home for the mentally ill. He told me the sales price, and I did a quick
conversion from pounds to dollars. Yes,
we could probably afford it, if we sold our own home. But oh, what a commute to work!
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| The remaining back yard of the real Skeldale House in Thirsk. |
One of the striking aspects of the TV version of Skeldale
House had been the unique diagonal driveway behind it. In the books, a man hung out in the barn, and
in the TV show, the grounds included a large back yard, a barn and a
garage. The real Skeldale House in Thirsk also had a large back yard, but the lot was later divided,
and the excess land sold. In the TV
series, James could walk his dog across the back yard, and then into a seemingly
endless field for grazing animals. I
walked around the TV house in Askrigg, only to discover that the driveway was
actually another street. So the house
had no yard whatsoever! It wasn’t even
rectangular, but wedge-shaped.
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| "Wait a minute! Where'd the back yard go?" |
While I was initially disappointed, it soon struck me that
this was the magic of film: to create wondrous places that exist in our
imaginations. The Skeldale House in my
mind was so much grander than the house in Askrigg. A part of me, a very unrealistic part of me,
yearned to give up life in San Diego and move to this quiet English village. I could buy the house, and
carefully modernize it into a house worthy of its James Herriot heritage. But a better dream might be to invest
the home I have with all the love and majesty that I respect in the TV show
version. It was that love and devotion
to the house that had drawn me here. To
make my own home into an equally special place seems a more worthy challenge.
A recent Google search revealed that the Herriot house in Askrigg had been sold. I
wish the new owners well. May they find happiness there, and lavish much love upon this historic building.
Dragon Dave
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