Castleton and The Hand of Glory

From across the valley, High Castleton looks innocent enough. Rooftops, a lane, a good deal of weather.

The place has long been spoken of apart from Low Castleton below it, and in 1864 it kept an inn of its own¹OS Six-inch England and Wales, Yorkshire Sheet 30. Published: 1856.https://maps.nls.uk/view/266665000#zoom=5.9&lat=4613&lon=8835&layers=BT. The Wakefield Free Press in that year reported: “The Buck Inn, William Lawson’s, is a plain house kept by very obliging people.”²”6  WALKS IN YORKSHIRE.  CLEVELAND — UPPER ESKDALE — OVER  MOORS TO LEWISHAM STATION.  IX.” Wakefield Free Press. 16 July 1864. Page 6. Faint praise, delivered with Victorian restraint, and quite enough to keep a landlord content.

Stranger things lay under the thatch. In the early 20th century a mummified severed hand was found hidden in the wall of a thatched cottage in Castleton³Archaeo-Environment Ltd for North York Moors National Park Authority, Castleton Conservation Area Character Appraisal and Management Plan, July 2023, sections 4.0 and 7.5.. Hawthorn Cottage on the High Street is named as the spot, and the find became known as the Danby Hand of Glory. Folklore held that such a hand was the pickled right hand of a hanged felon, cut from the gallows and used by burglars to send a household into a sleep from which nobody could wake. A candle held in its fingers could be put out only with blood or skimmed milk.

Whitby Museum has had it since 1935, and it is the only alleged Hand of its type known to survive⁴Hand of Glory. Whitby Museum. https://whitbymuseum.org.uk/hand-of-glory/ Accessed 3 Nov 2026..

• 1
  OS Six-inch England and Wales, Yorkshire Sheet 30. Published: 1856.https://maps.nls.uk/view/266665000#zoom=5.9&lat=4613&lon=8835&layers=BT ↩︎
• 2
  ”6  WALKS IN YORKSHIRE.  CLEVELAND — UPPER ESKDALE — OVER  MOORS TO LEWISHAM STATION.  IX.” Wakefield Free Press. 16 July 1864. Page 6. ↩︎
• 3
  Archaeo-Environment Ltd for North York Moors National Park Authority, Castleton Conservation Area Character Appraisal and Management Plan, July 2023, sections 4.0 and 7.5. ↩︎
• 4
  Hand of Glory. Whitby Museum. https://whitbymuseum.org.uk/hand-of-glory/ Accessed 3 Nov 2026. ↩︎