Hawes

The neck between the mountains

The name Hawes comes from the Old Norse hals, meaning neck, or a pass between mountains. It is a precisely accurate description. The town sits at the head of Wensleydale in the gap between Buttertubs and Fleet Moss, and at around 850 feet above sea level it is one of the highest market towns in England.

That Norse name is not an isolated survival. The place names across this dale are heavily Scandinavian: Gayle, just south of Hawes, comes from the Old Norse geil, meaning ravine. Fell, beck, gill, thwaite and force are all Norse words in everyday Yorkshire use, a linguistic fossil record of ninth and tenth century settlement.

Hawes does not appear in the Domesday Book, which suggests there was no significant settlement here in 1086. A market is first recorded in 1307, and King William III granted a formal market charter in 1699. The Tuesday market still runs.

Cheese

Wensleydale cheese-making is traditionally traced to French monks who settled at Fors near Askrigg in 1145 and later moved to Jervaulx Abbey, bringing their methods with them. After the Dissolution the knowledge passed to local farmers, and for centuries cheese was made on individual farms by the women of the household.

It was skilled, physically demanding work, and reputations were made and lost on it. A woman without the knack was said to lack good cheesehands.

The first commercial creamery opened in Hawes in 1897. The modern Wensleydale Creamery was established in 1992 by former workers of the original dairy, and Yorkshire Wensleydale was granted Protected Geographical Indication status in 2013, meaning the name can only be used for cheese made in the dale.

Buttertubs

The Buttertubs Pass climbs north from near Hawes towards Swaledale, past a series of limestone potholes around twenty metres deep. Tradition holds that farmers carrying butter to market would rest here and lower their butter into the shafts to keep it cool in hot weather.

The route was a genuine trade artery. Butter traders carried Swaledale produce over the pass to sell in Hawes, connecting two dales separated by high ground.

What you will see

We walk the town, the market place and the surrounding meadows, covering Norse settlement and place names, the history of Dales farming and cheese-making, the hay meadow system that shapes the valley floor, and the industrial traces of lead mining, quarrying and lime burning in the hills around.