TOWN OF LOST GLORY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 209, 17 June 1935, Page 3

TOWN OF LOST GLORY.

KNARESBOROUGH'S DECLINE. On the limestone bank of a river flowing through tlie West Riding of Yorkshire, one of England's oldest towns has sunk from the heigths of industrial prosperity to the depths of antiquarian inactivity (says a special correspondent of the "London Morning Post.") During the reign of Henry VIII. it was a national industrial centre of considerable importance. When the great commercial cities which prospered and grew years later with the industrial revolution were still remote villages, (Knaresborough was mining and working lead ore, and manufacturing cloth; it was the home of the Yorkshire linen : industry, and the.northern centre for leather manufacture. From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries it returned two members to Parliament. Its population was perpetually increasing. To-day it returns no member to Parliament. Its population has increased ;by 7 per cent during the last 10 years but the present figure is little in excess of that returned in 1831. Its industrial output has fallen to depths of national insignificance. As I walked its narrow cobbled [streets, many of which have presented an identical appearance for hundreds of years, I found signs of its lost dignity and prosperity. The remains of the massive keep of the castle which the Royalists surrendered to Fairfax after Marston Moor stood' in rugged isolation on a cliff aboye the Nidd. There were traces of an abbey over the 1 site of which grass now grows thick. Further down the river I saw two watei* mills. One had been out of commission for over 100 years, but the other has been grinding flour since 1400. The miller took me on to the platform over the water wheel. The wheel was covered with moss and lichen; the axle had not been replaced since the reign of George IV. I crossed the river and made for the famous petrifying well. Over the edge of a rock, a well is perpetually dripping water containing iron, sulphur, lime and magnesia. Socks, hats, dead animals and birds and other discarded objects were strung on lines beneath the flow. They were slowly be*ing turned to stone. "It's the only well of its kind. It's in the right place, too, in this town," said the guide. Then ho showed me the cave in which Mother Shipton was supposed to have dwelt at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Mother Shipton is said to have prophesied steam power and the enormous increase in the utility of steel. It seems a strange anomaly that the town whence the prophecies of such colossal commercial development came should not have benefited from their fulfilment.