THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Established in the late seventeenth century in the far-flung reaches of Tripsdale, the Blue Ball was famed as a stopping-point for smugglers hauling salt and rum from the nearby coast, and for the bands of itinerant bilberry-pickers who descended on the area’s treacherous ravines each Autumn to reap its lucrative harvest.  Nights in bilberry season were wild: rivals clashed, and death and debauchery abounded. The pub was burned to the ground during the infamous Tripsdale Bilberry Wars of 1864.

unpub