The bar is still graced by the fine oaken table with a beautiful ornate design carved along its edge; once it stood in the refectory in Coverham Abbey so the innkeeper says. In the croft behind the Foresters' Arms is an isolated round Knoll with an aged tree crowning it. This it is thought was the Carl Motte where the elders of Carlton a thousand years ago foregathered and held their outdoor parliament and wapentake . Possibly the forest courts were held here on the mound also. From the croft a path drops to a deep gill hoile not far from the river. Here the Cover is crossed by a footbridge.

A climbing path follows another ravine called Red Ghyll, a beck hidden in ironstone chasms. West Scrafton lies above and beyond. We chose to cross the pastures to the village, climbing step by step up the strip lynchets. There are many signs of old cultivation around Scrafton. In fact, accord ing to a villager, it is not so many years since an attempt was made to rearrange the scattered fields so that farmers should hold land in one piece. Until then the old feudal system held good, where to ensure complete fairness each man had good land and bad, a share of fell, a share of dale bottom and it did not matter how far he had to go to work the different isolated allotments.

We entered the village by a narrow flower choked lane, scented with Sweet Cicily. I first met the plant here when a small boy sucking a stem offered me another saying, It's nice. It's aniseed. Some call it sweet fern, .sweet bracken or gale, but Sweet Cicily I think the prettiest name. Farm wives used it for polishing oak and said a few sprays in the meal ark would keep the supply of meal fresh and sweet and free from mustiness through the winter.

West Scrafton is another village with great appeal, though few strangers know of it; a sleepy place and away from busy highways, completely forgotten by history. Scrafton goes to bed early; at sunset the place had already a tread softly for fear you wake me look. A few geese filed home in the decorous manner of their kind, hens went to roost and two or three sleepy dogs, head on paws, cocked an ear, but barked not. Let us look at this sleepy hillside; farms and cottages cheek by jowl in the usual companionable high dales fashion, all with new maroon coats of paint on doors and windows, silent barns and two chapels one Wesleyan and the other Primitive according to their tablets neither any archi tectural asset to the place. A late lark soared and a thrush pointed his bill to the sunset and sang his heart out. Not one discordant sound was there to shatter the heavenly peace. Standing on the little bridge we heard the low voice of the beck, a quiet murmur above and a deeper note in the gill below.