This large, late eighteenth century cowhouse is one of the first ones you will see on your way down into Swaledale from the famous Buttertubs Pass. Its prominent position above the dale is perhaps the reason why we have collected several stories about it from people who once used it. It stands in Banty Field which has now gone back to rushes but was once a fine haymeadow. Dorothy Brown remembers all too well one long hot day having to work there:
“The story about Banty that always sticks in my mind, the cow’uss, in haymaking time. It didn’t matter what you were doing or how ill you felt, at that point, one day I was feeling really grotty…..and my father said, ‘right, we have to get this hay in, it’s going to rain’, and we went into the cowhouse, there’d be one of my uncles and me sister and I, and we had to tramp the hay down right to the rafters and it was hot, it was dusty. You didn’t wear trousers, you had cotton skirts so the hay prickled your legs, it was horrible. I would say it was one of the most awful experiences of me life really, uncomfortable, and just hard, because you couldn’t breath either and you had to cram as much hay in as you could, to the rafters, so then when you’d got right to the last little bit and you’d got it then you could crawl out of the forking hole window and they’d help you down to the bottom….”
Dorothy Brown (nee Clarkson) formerly of Scarr House Farm