THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Crackpot Hall has a majestic situation.  Far below in the valley the river curves serpent-like, its pebbly bed stretching wide on both sides, and the fells rolling grandly back from the meadows which line its backs.  The house standing proudly above it seems to exult in its position.  Who cares for the wind and storms when it can gaze down on this?

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The children of Crackpot Hall are untamed like their home.  Until they get to school and lose a little of their naturalness they are spirits of the moors, running barefoot among them, clambering like animals over the loose stone walls, which are high and hard to scale on this hill-side.  Once as we sat gazing at the distant view of Keld, there was a sudden rush from behind, our caps and sticks were snatched away and hurled over the wall, and a tiny figure clambered after them with a mocking, chuckling laugh – that was Alice at four years old, Alice with the madness of the moors about her, and all their wariness.  Most of her speech is in so strong a dialect that it might be a foreign tongue.  She has been lost and found fast asleep in a gully or a hayfield far from the house.  Her eager face, its keen eyes framed by fair, tumbled hair, is to us a part of the fascination of Crackpot Hall.

Pontefract/Swaledale, 1946