Keld is a village in the English county of

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in Northern England.The Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority areas of City of York, York and North Yorkshire (district), North Yorkshire are in Yorkshire and t ...

. It is in Swaledale, and the

Yorkshire Dales The Yorkshire Dales are a series of valleys, or Dale (landform), dales, in the Pennines, an Highland, upland range in England. They are mostly located in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, but extend into C ...

National Park. The name derives from the Viking word ''Kelda'' meaning a spring and the village was once called ''Appletre Kelde'' – the spring near the apple trees. From 1974 to 2023 it was part of the district of

Richmondshire {{Infobox settlement , name = Richmondshire District , type = Non-metropolitan district , image_skyline = , imagesize = , image_caption = , image_blank_emblem= Richmondshire arms.png , blank_em ...

, it is now administered by the unitary

North Yorkshire Council North Yorkshire Council, known between 1974 and 2023 as North Yorkshire County Council, is the local authority for the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire, England. Since 2023 the council has been a unitary authority, being a county coun ...

. Keld is the crossing point of the Coast to Coast Walk and the

Pennine Way The Pennine Way is a National Trail in England, with a small section in Scotland. The trail stretches for from Edale, in the northern Derbyshire Peak District, north through the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Park and ends at Kir ...

long-distance footpaths at the head of Swaledale, and marks the end of the Swale Trail, a 20 km mountain bike trail which starts in Reeth. At the height of the lead-mining industry in Swaledale in the late 19th century, several notable buildings – now Grade II listed – were erected: they include the Congregational and Methodist chapels, the school and the Literary Institute. A tea room and small shop operate at Park Lodge from Easter to autumn. Out of season, local volunteers provide a self service café for visitors in the village’s Public Hall. Keld’s Youth Hostel closed in 2008 and has since reopened as Keld Lodge, a hotel with bar and restaurant. There is a series of four waterfalls close to Keld in a

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

gorge on the

River Swale The River Swale in Yorkshire, England, is a major tributary of the River Ure, which becomes the River Ouse, Yorkshire, River Ouse, that empties into the North Sea via the Humber Estuary. The river gives its name to Swaledale, the valley throu ...

: Kisdon Force, East Gill Force, Catrake Force and Wain Wath Force.

Keld Resource Centre

The Keld Resource Centre, a local charity, is restoring a series of listed buildings in the village centre and returning them to community use. The first phase involved restoring the Manse, the minister's house attached to the

United Reformed Church The United Reformed Church (URC) is a Protestant Christian church in the United Kingdom. As of 2024 it had approximately 44,000 members in around 1,250 congregations with 334 stipendiary ministers. The URC is a Trinitarian church whose theolog ...

, which was completed in 2009 and is now used as a holiday cottage, proceeds from which support the Centre's work. In 2010 the Centre created the Keld Well-being Garden in the chapel churchyard. It provides a quiet spot for visitors to contemplate their well-being in the beautiful natural environment of Upper Swaledale. The Keld Countryside and Heritage Centre opened in 2011; it provides interpretation of the countryside, buildings and social history of Keld, and displays of artefacts relevant to Upper Swaledale. It is open throughout the year, operating alongside The Upper Room which is used for meetings, exhibitions, workshops and social events. A range of guided walks, exhibitions, talks and other activities take place during the summer months. Further projects will involve restoring Keld’s former school.

Crackpot Hall

The ruins of Crackpot Hall lie about a mile east of Keld on the northern slope of the dale at . There may have been a building on this site since the 16th century when a hunting lodge was maintained for Thomas, the first Baron Wharton, who visited the Dale occasionally to shoot the

red deer The red deer (''Cervus elaphus'') is one of the largest deer species. A male red deer is called a stag or Hart (deer), hart, and a female is called a doe or hind. The red deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Anatolia, Ir ...

. Survey work by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has shown that the building has changed many times over the years. At one time it even had a heather or "ling" thatched roof. The current ruin is of a farmhouse dating from the mid 18th century. It was an impressive two-storey building with a

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

roof and matching "shippons" or cowsheds at each end for animals. The building may also have been used as mine offices, as intensive lead mining was carried out in the area, and there were violent disputes over mine boundaries in the 18th century. In the 1930s Ella Pontefract and Marie Hartley wrote of a wild 4-year-old child named Alice. On 7 November 2015, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a documentary about the story in the ''Between the Ears'' strand titled ''Alice at Crackpot Hall''. The current building was abandoned in the 1950s because of

subsidence Subsidence is a general term for downward vertical movement of the Earth's surface, which can be caused by both natural processes and human activities. Subsidence involves little or no horizontal movement, which distinguishes it from slope mov ...

. Crackpot Hall has been saved from further decay by Gunnerside Estate with the aid of grants from the

Millennium Commission The Millennium Commission, a United Kingdom public body, was set up to celebrate the turn of the millennium. It used funding raised through the UK National Lottery to assist communities in marking the close of the second millennium and celebra ...

and

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

through the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. The name ''Crackpot'' is said to mean "a deep hole or chasm that is a haunt of crows".

References

External links

Keld Lodge
{{authority control Villages in North Yorkshire Swaledale