The peculiar honour of being the highest-situated inn appears, after much contention, to belong to the Tan Hill Inn, in the midst of a ghastly hill-top solitude in the North Riding of Yorkshire. You can get to it – I will not say most easily and conveniently, for convenience and ease in this connection are things unknown, but with less discomfort and fatigue – by way of Richmond, and when you have got there, will curse the curiosity that brought you to so literally howling a wilderness.
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Cheerfulness is not a characteristic of those who keep hill-top inns: hence the suspicion that they are misanthropes who, hating sight or sound of their kind, retire to such unfrequented spots, and, when the stray traveller seeks refreshment, instead of weeping salt tears of joy, or exhibiting any minor sign of emotion, grudgingly attend to his ways, and vouchsafe as little information as they safely can.
Harper/Inns, 1906
THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT 
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