The Long Lost Way to Cockayne

At first glance, it is nothing remarkable: a pair of stone gate stoops, standing quietly beside a graceful curve in a dry-stone wall, just south-west of Cockayne Church. But ignore the leaning wooden 5-bar gate secured by baling twine, and a closer look tells a different story. These are no rough farm gateposts. Each is a massive, well-dressed slab, crowned with a semicircular top. They were built to impress. A recess for a gate and its catch is the only sign of their original function. The flagged causeway that once led to them lies hidden now beneath the turf¹National Trust Heritage Records Online. Record ID: 33896 / MNA145979. Two stoop gate. https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA145979.

Beyond the gate, the land is overrun. Brambles, nettles, and rosebay willowherb choke the way forward. Yet the outline of a path remains clear, a remnant of the old way to the church. Behind the tangle, a revetment wall still stands, holding back the slope.

Old maps show the full picture. This was once a key route, linking Bransdale Mill with Cockayne, crossing the beck by footbridge and ford. Today, only a faint echo survives on modern maps: a dotted green line marking “Other routes with public access”. Even this is vague, the imprecise spacing of the dots giving no certainty that it ever passed through this gate. Although it probably did.

Now, the path seems to belong to no one. It is missing from the National Park’s Rights of Way Map, absent from the online version of the North Yorkshire Council’s Definitive Map, but it would only have been included by the Ordnance Survey by its precise instruction. The council’s road map does not list it either. In official eyes, it simply does not exist.

What remains is an orphaned route, abandoned to nature. A maintained link between the mill and the church would be a fine addition to Bransdale’s network of paths. Instead, it has slipped quietly from use, leaving only the gate stoops as a reminder of the days when this was the route the miller and his family walked to church.

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  National Trust Heritage Records Online. Record ID: 33896 / MNA145979. Two stoop gate. https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA145979