THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

A more dismal prototype of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, undecorated by any appliance of modern civilisation or recent improvement, can scarcely be conceived.  It is probably just the same in many respects as at the Roman invasion or Norman conquest, the language of the generality of inhabitants quite as unintelligible, the immediate environs of the village equally uncultivated.  Geese and asses roam the unenclosed common, free and unfettered as the naked Britons, and seem, like Robinson Crusoe, to consider themselves “monarchs of all they survey”.  Ponds, ditches, swamps, declivities, and other ingenious traps of a similar description, abound for the unwary traveller. Altogether it is quite Celtic and aboriginal.

(Ord/Cleveland)