Fountains Ways - Fishers' Way, Nidderdale

Fishers’ Way (Kirkby Malzeard, Grewelthorpe, Mickley), 5.5 miles, 1 day

Following the Norman Conquest, the north of England was devastated in what is known as the ‘harrying of the north’ to suppress opposition to the newly-crowned king. According to a chronicler, William the Conqueror "commanded that all crops, herds and food of any kind be brought together and burned to ashes so that the whole region north of the [river] Humber be deprived of any source of sustenance".

The Norman Settlement of Kirkby Malzeard

Out of this devastation, Kirkby Malzeard is a characteristic planned Norman settlement with a large church alongside the now-ruined castle and a long main street. The church of St Andrew was for centuries the only parish church for miles around. Its Romanesque south door dates from around 1170, though the church was extensively rebuilt following a fire in 1908. Kirkby Malzeard received its market charter in 1307.

Between Kirkby Malzeard and Grewelthorpe the walk passes through a classic lower-Dales landscape of farmland, hedgerows and pasture. The church of St James at Grewelthorpe was built in the 1840s and is now shared, with Anglicans and Methodists both holding services in the same building.

On a hill near Grewelthorpe is a rectangular enclosure with substantial earth banks that is the remains of a Roman camp.

Between Grewelthorpe and Mickley, in the Ure Valley, the walk passes through an overgrown but dramatic eighteenth-century wooded landscape within a steep, rocky gorge called Hackfall, carpeted with bluebells in spring and dotted with temples and follies planned by William Aislabie of Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey (see Abbots’ Way walk). Mickley (‘large field’) is a quiet, picturesque village on a minor road on the south side of the River Ure. There are substantial ruins of a former mill by the river. The church of St John was built in the 1840s and the simple early nineteenth-century Methodist chapel is now a private house.

This route is part of a group of three intersecting Fountains Way routes:

Fountains Way, Abbot's Way

Fountains Way, Curlew Way

Fountains Way, Fishers' Way