Ripon hotels collection

Beneath Ripon Cathedral, a Saxon crypt, narrow and low, has outlasted everything rebuilt above it; its walls are made of stones cut by the Romans and brought here from elsewhere. In the valley of the Skell, John Aislabie, cast out of office after the South Sea Bubble, spent his disgrace disciplining water: straight canals, crescent-moon pools, temples at the edge of the lawns. Upstream, the ruins of Fountains Abbey, in brown sandstone, closed the view without belonging to him; his son ended up buying them.