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Where Turner Stayed in YorkshireThe locations where Turner spent the night...This is a Turner Trails downloadable guide. You can discover more about Turner’s Yorkshire at www.yorkshire.com/turner.

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Turner sketched Pavement and the Black Horse again when he visited York in 1816. Sadly, the Black Horse was demolished some time during the subsequent years but its location can be identified.

Where Turner Stayed in YorkshireAs JMW Turner watches his horse being stabled at the inn after a long day’s ride, his thoughts don’t turn to dinner and a rest. Turner, an artist who squeezes every last glimmer of light from the day, plans where he will sketch during the evening.

This enthusiasm to make the most of every day characterises Turner’s visits to Yorkshire. Almost every time he reaches a new place for the night, he is out exploring his surroundings as the light starts to fade. Yet the hotels and inns Turner stayed at were vital to the success of his sketching tours of the county, and without them he would not have been able to make hundreds of drawings during punishing schedules.

We are fortunate to know some of the towns and villages where Turner spent the night, and even the inns and hotels he stayed in. One of these was the timber-framed Black Horse Inn in York, where Turner stayed for a few days in 1797 while he waited for Edward Lascelles to call him to Harewood House. We can presume Turner stayed at the Black

Horse because of a clue in his very first sketch of York. Made outside the inn, it shows the view down Pavement towards All Saints Church. A three-storey timber building on the left of the street has a sign on its first floor where Turner has written ‘Black H’ – Black Horse. His friend and fellow artist, Thomas Girtin, had drawn a watercolour of the same scene the year before and may have recommended the Black Horse to Turner.

Sleeping with Turner

You can spend the night in

some of the Yorkshire inns

Turner stayed at. These

include the Green Dragon,

Hardraw and The Kings

Head, Richmond.

Useful Info...

Mill Gill Force - Turner visited Mill Gill Force while staying in Askrigg

Image reproduced by permission of the Tate Gallery © Tate, London 2010

York Minster, York

Hardraw Force

www.yorkshire.com/turner

Skipton Castle

York Minster, York

Turner returned to Richmond and probably The Kings Head Hotel again in 1816. He was making an extensive tour of Yorkshire to work on sketches for ‘A General History of the County of York’ by Thomas Dunham Whitaker. An ambitious illustrated history of the county, it was never completed after the author died and the publisher baulked at the huge costs.

We can follow part of Turner’s 1816 tour of Yorkshire through the places he stayed at after he left Farnley Hall, near Otley, the home of his friend Walter Fawkes. Fawkes and his family joined Turner for his tour of Wharfedale, beginning in Skipton, where they most likely stayed in the recently refurbished Black Horse, before moving on to Malham via Browsholme.

If you would like to visit the site of the Black Horse, you can explore Turner’s viewpoints of York with a self-guided podstroll, a digital mini-book which is viewed on an iPod or mobile phone, available to download from the Turner Trails website.

One hotel that has survived since Turner stayed there in 1797 is The Kings Head Hotel in Richmond. Built in 1717 as a ‘gentleman’s townhouse’, it was the largest and most modern hotel in town at the time and Turner is believed to have described it as “the finest in Richmondshire.” He used the hotel as his base for exploring the town and its surroundings for views of the castle and nearby Easby Abbey. You can explore Turner’s Richmond viewpoints with an audio tour beginning at The Kings Head. Download the tour from the Turner Trails website to listen on an iPod, mp3 player or mobile phone.

www.yorkshire.com/turner

York’s French FootpathYork’s first paved street was built in the medieval period. It was, and still is, called Pavement after the French for paved way.

Did you know?

Inn for the Night18th century inns looked after more than just people. In those days, inns had stables because people travelled by horse or horse-drawn stagecoach – if they weren’t walking.

Interesting Fact...

Middleham Castle

Richmond Castle © Si Homfray

St Agatha’s Abbey, Easby, Yorkshire © The Trustees of the British Museum

The Kings Head Hotel, Richmond

Leyburn Market Place, Leyburn

After a visit to Gordale Scar on the 25th July, Mrs Fawkes wrote in her diary that they ‘returned home in heavy rain. Turner went on a sketching tour.’

Turner began this next stage of his tour in Kettlewell, where his choice of inns was between the Blue Bell Inn and the Racehorses Hotel. As was typical of Turner, he stabled his horse, took refreshments and was off to sketch. His destination on this late summer’s evening was Dow Cave, a major system of underground caverns about 1.5 miles away, where he tried drawing by candlelight.

Malton

Boroughbridge © Si Homfray

Kettlewell

www.yorkshire.com/turner

Long-distance Commuter

It took two days to reach Yorkshire by stagecoach from

London in Turner’s time. And that was by fast coach

along the Great North Road, with an overnight stop in

Stamford, Lincolnshire.

Interesting Fact...

All in a Day’s Journey

Today you can easily drive across

Yorkshire in a few hours. When Turner

visited, the best he could hope for by

horse was 25 to 30 miles a day. He

regularly managed over 20, even while

stopping to sketch.

Did You Know? The next morning he sketched Kilnsley Crag before crossing over Stake Pass into Wensleydale. He stayed the night of the 26th at the Kings Arms in Askrigg, a quiet village of tall houses and a cobbled market square. This time, after stabling his horse, he went on a walking tour to sketch the area’s waterfalls, taking in Yorebridge, Colby Falls, Mill Gill Force and Whitfield Gill Force before returning to the Kings Arms for the night.

The following day he rode to Hardraw Force, a well-known attraction of the time, where he did not have to go far from his accommodation to find his viewpoints. The Force is in the grounds of the Green Dragon Inn where Turner slept on the 27th. He probably spent the next night in Aysgarth, and sketched the falls here too, before spending the 29th July travelling once more to Richmond. During a stopover of two nights in The Kings Head Hotel, Turner revisited many of the places he had sketched in 1797, before heading north into Durham.

Turner returned to Yorkshire in August, staying at Farnley Hall before going on a further week-long sketching tour towards the end of the month. He stopped over at Boroughbridge, a busy staging post on the Great North Road, where he had a choice of inns serving the many stagecoaches passing through. The bridge that gave the town its name appears in four Turner sketches, while views of nearby Ellenthorpe Hall were drawn twice. At the beginning of September he stayed in Leyburn on his route from Middleham to Constable Burton.

This is a Turner Trails downloadable guide. You can discover more about Turner’s Yorkshire at www.yorkshire.com/turner.

Staying with Turner in YorkshireCheck the Turner Trails website for information about the places where Turner stayed while he visited Yorkshire. You can click on the following links to go straight to the web page.

Askrigg and the Kings Arms, Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Dow Cave, Hardraw Force, Leyburn, Malton and the Talbot Hotel, Skipton Castle, The Kings Head Hotel, Richmond and York Minster.

You can find Turner Trails benches at the following places where he stayed: Askrigg and the Kings Arms, Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Constable Burton, Kettlewell (for Dow Cave), Hardraw Force, Leyburn, Skipton Castle, The Kings Head Hotel, Richmond.

There are panels, self-guided trails, audio trails and podstrolls at a number of the places where Turner stayed.

Check out www.yorkshire.com/turnerdownloads for the trails.

One of the last Yorkshire hotels we know Turner stayed at was the Talbot Hotel in Malton. He passed through Malton on his way from Scarborough to Farnley Hall sometime between 1816 and 1818, where he sketched a view of a church, houses and the hotel from somewhere near the hotel’s garden.

Farnley Hall was the place Turner stayed the most while in Yorkshire. He regularly visited the Fawkes family, who kept a room ready for him, until Walter died in 1825. Turner rarely visited Yorkshire again, but by this time and over almost thirty years, the county had given him the inspiration to become the ‘painter of light’. The innkeepers and hoteliers certainly played their part in ensuring Turner made the most of his Yorkshire sketching tours and developed into one of England’s greatest artists.

Turner’s HostTurner’s host at York in 1797 was John Underwood. He was innkeeper of the Blackhorse Inn and made a Freeman of York the same year Turner stayed at the inn. John was married in 1798 in St Crux, the church that was opposite the inn.

Interesting Fact...

Aysgarth Falls, Leyburn © Si Homfray

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