Mondays are my cycling days. Tootling around the villages of North Yorkshire. The River Leven at Hutton Rudby is spanned by a two-segmented arched bridge built in 1755 according to Pevsner, the historical architect. The river flows down a deep valley separating the two parts of the village. Rudby on the north side, and Hutton on the south. All Saints church, which has stonework that been Pevsner dates to the 14th-century, is on the Rudby side. The etymology of the two settlements is interesting. The ton of Hutton signifies it was a settlement of Angles: the high village, occupying an island of drier glacial gravels in a sea of clay which would have been better for farming. Rudby, on the other hand, is from the Scandanavian, rodebi meaning Rudi’s farmstead. The first documented linkage for the two settlements is from 1204: Hotton juxta Rodebi. Hoton was probably already well established when the Danes arrived and set up rodebi. Did they get on together or was there some animosity from a fear of the new arrivals?
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