Vast and gloriously variable, Yorkshire stretches from the mighty Pennine peaks, across wild and remote heather-clad Dales and moors, to the rugged North Sea coast, simultaneously taking in cities including Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield, Bradford and York. An extraordinary breadth of art and literature reveals the inspiration that creatives have found within its landscape, from Barbara Hepworth to David Hockney, Bram Stoker to Emily Brontë.
As those who are acquainted with Yorkshire’s contemporary topography will know, alongside the searing beauty of the region are exciting new hotels, a thriving food scene, and an impressive cultural offering by way of galleries, sculpture gardens and dramatic ruined abbeys that stand as a reminder of Henry VIII’s Reformation – a time when the region was a hotbed of uprisings and revolts. There’s also racing (horses and ferrets), local markets and sheep fairs, design and antiques shops, and exceptional historic houses and gardens.
The only fly in the ointment is the previously mentioned extent of Yorkshire; it can be galling to book a lovely hotel near Whitby, and then discover that Salts Mill, the design shop and contemporary gallery which holds a permanent collection of works by David Hockney, is a two-hour drive away. To which end, with added input from industry insiders including Susan Deliss, Mary Graham of Salvesen Graham, art dealer Willoughby Gerrish, and this magazine’s editor Hatta Byng, we’ve broken it down into four separate areas, which are still quite big, and overlap – so don’t allow our grouping to stop you consulting a map. Final disclaimer: this is not an exhaustive guide (see size, again) – but it’s a strong starting point.
The Yorkshire Dales
On the eastern edge of the Yorkshire Dales (which, to clarify, consist of extensive areas of moorland) is Swinton Park, a hotel of more than 20 years standing. Behind the fairytale façade, it still feels like a family home – albeit one on 20,000 acres of majestic landscape, much of which is ripe for exploring. There are portraits on the walls and a drawing room to relax in, as well as a deer park, cookery school, spa, a lake that hosts wild swimming, and extraordinarily good restaurants (a request for a packed lunch can also be met, and delivered, mid-walk or bicycle ride.) As well, the hotel has dog-friendly self-catering houses and cottages, and off-grid tree lodges and yurts.
Otherwise, head for the comfortable Devonshire Arms on the Bolton Abbey Estate, owned by the Cavendish family (aka the Dukes of Devonshire, also of Chatsworth). The estate takes its name from a 12th-century Augustinian monastery, whose ruins you can explore, and there are further miles of walking. The ruins were painted by J.M.W. Turner and Edwin Landseer and inspired William Wordsworth’s poem The White Doe of Rylstone. The hotel has a spa, and an excellent restaurant.
The Dales are studded with charming villages and market towns hewn from honey-coloured local stone, that still host regular markets. Leyburn, at the heart of Wensleydale, has theirs on Friday, and offers a wide range of local produce (including Wensleydale cheese) and crafts. While you’re there, Susan Deliss recommends Campbell’s of Leyburn, a family-owned supermarket with delicatessen, butcher and world-class wines, and Tennants auctioneers, who consistently have lovely antiques, art and interior items. Susan also suggests the town of Hawes for their antiques shops, and the Blue Lion in East Witton for a very good pub supper (it has rooms, too.)
Masham (the nearest town to Swinton Park) is also very pretty. Their weekly market is smaller than Leyburn’s – but shops include The Curious Merchant, voted one of House & Garden’s best independent design shops in the country. It sells a mixture of decorative antiques, ceramics, textiles and homewares by emerging (and often local) designers. Masham also has an annual sheep fair with a programme of sheep racing, sheepdog demonstrations, and Morris dancing – it’s enormous fun.
For more in the way of contemporary design, the previously mentioned Salts Mill in Saltaire (on the edge of Bradford, where David Hockney was born) occupies a Victorian former textile factory overlooking the river Aire. Another of our best independent design shops, there’s a well-curated selection of modern and contemporary furniture, and the collection of works by Hockney has been translated into prints. It has a restaurant, too, and a gallery; the next exhibition is devoted to Pauline Caulfield’s beguiling textiles.
Not far from Salts Mill is the seasonally open East Riddlesden Hall, where the 2009 BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights was filmed. The Brontës themselves didn’t live far from there – their former family home in Haworth, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, can be visited. A little further north is Arncliffe, and Yorkshire artist Kitty North’s gallery – and The Art House, a cottage that, with Robin Lucas, she’s turned into an immersive landscape painting of the surrounding countryside. Sometimes available to rent, it would make an ideal base from which to set out for long walks in the Pennines. It’s this region of the Dales that inspired some of Willemina Barns-Graham’s paintings. Also on this side is the Craven Arms pub in Appletreewick with good food, open fires, and an annual evening of ferret racing.
The Vales of Mowbray and York
The Dales are separated from the Yorkshire Moors by the plains of the Vales of Mowbray and York – and York itself. The city was founded by the Romans in 71AD, when the famous Ninth Legion (subject of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth) conquered the Brigantes, a local tribe, and built a military fortress on the banks of the River Ouse. Roman walls still surround the medieval centre – just outside them is No. 1 by Guesthouse, York, one of the city’s newest hotels, situated in a 19th-century townhouse with sash windows, a sweeping staircase, and a columned façade. There are 39 rooms, a spa in the former air raid shelter in the basement, a well-reputed restaurant – and it’s only a 10-minute walk to the magnificent York Minster, whose stained-glass windows are some of the oldest in Europe. Around the corner from there is the charmingly higgledy deconsecrated church of Holy Trinity, Goodgramgate, whose foundations date to the 12th century, and where Anne Lister, whose life was explored in the BBC’s Gentleman Jack series, was notionally married to Ann Walker in 1834.
Just outside the city, and open on occasion over the summer months, is the late Georgian Brockfield Hall, home of this magazine’s editor Hatta Byng and her husband Charles Wood (together they orchestrated an award-winning restoration of the house) and a large selection of Staithes Group artists’ paintings (whose significance will be explained in the section on the Yorskhire Moors and the Coast.) York Art Gallery is also worth a visit, particularly if you are interested in British Studio Ceramics; they have one of the largest and most important collections in the UK. In terms of where to eat, Roots York is a Michelin-starred restaurant with tasting menus and a Sunday feast, then there’s Tasca Frango, which specialises in mouthwatering Portugese cuisine.
For shopping around York, Hatta recommends The French House, an antiques warehouse on the outskirts of the city, “there’s plenty of rummaging to be done there.” There’s also the nearby town of Malton, renowned as Yorkshire’s food capital and a cornucopia of artisan food shops, bakeries, cafes and restaurants, as well as a monthly food market (the second Saturday of each month) with specialist stalls, street food and music. Alongside are antiques shops – Hatta names TallBoy Interiors, “which is particularly good for vintage sofas and chairs,” and “a brilliant country ‘department store’ called Yates that sells anything and everything.”
Those looking for a more rural setting for a stay could head north on the A1 to Thirsk, and the 18th-century Thirsk Hall, home of art dealer Willoughby Gerrish and art consultant Daisy Bell. They’ve initiated a sculpture garden along with exhibitions programme – and there’s bell tent glamping, which crucially comes with hot showers and flushing loos. They also let a two-bedroom flat in the south wing of the house, which is hung with (unsurprisingly) rather good art. A few doors down in the Zillah Bell Gallery, run by Daisy’s father – who is not a dealer, but sells a wide range of paintings, works on paper and original prints on behalf of artists, many of whom are Royal Academicians, and his friends. Thirsk is also where All Creatures Great and Small writer James Herriot’s vet practice was located; his former house and surgery can be visited. Those in the market for their own ferrets, or Favorelles hens, will enjoy the Fur & Feathers auction, held on the first Saturday of every month. And, between April and September, there’s flat racing at Thirsk Racecourse; owners and trainers often celebrate afterwards at the Crab and Lobster restaurant in Asenby, just outside Thirsk – the rooms in the adjoining Georgian house, Crab Manor, are another where-to-stay option.
The other side of the A1 from Thirsk, Ripon is technically a city on account of its splendid cathedral (the carving on the choir stalls is of particular note) but it’s town-sized. It too hosts flat racing in the summer, and nearby is Fountains Abbey – another aesthetically attractive ruin immortalised by J.M.W. Turner – and the exceptionally fine Newby Hall, a favourite of Mary Graham, and open from the end of March to the end of September. Built in the 1690s by Sir Christopher Wren, it was later adapted by Robert Adam. There are also beautiful gardens, and, for those with children, an excellent playpark and a miniature train. It’s worth timing a trip to Ripon with one of chef and food writer James Ramsden’s monthly supper clubs at the Clock Barn.
Fifteen miles south of Ripon is Harrogate, home of the extraordinary Turkish Baths, whose interiors are a magnificent Victorian take on Ottoman splendour (the available spa treatments are more contemporary). It’s also where you’ll find Woods Fine Linen, the most comprehensive shop of its type in Britain, run by a family whose linen business heritage extends back to 1733. There is nowhere better for sheets, table linen, and all the rest. Last but not least, Harrogate is also the site of the original Bettys Tea Room, legendary purveyor of excellent cakes since 1919. There are now branches in York, Northallerton, and Ilkley, too – afternoon tea at one of them is a must.
The Yorkshire moors and the coast
In a striking spot on the North Yorkshire coast, where the moors reach almost to the sea, is one of House & Garden’s most exciting new design hotels of 2025. Saltmoore’s rooms and suites – designed by Studio Sapin to mirror the soft hues of the local landscape – are split across 19th-century Saltmoore House and more laidback, dog-and-child-friendly The Beach House. There’s a spa, restaurants overseen by Adam Maddock, former head chef at The Fife Arms, and it’s a 10-minute stroll from Sandsend’s bucket-and-spade beach. You’re also only a few miles from the more secluded Runswick Bay (it’s walkable, along the Cleveland Way) and the fishing village of Staithes (a slightly longer walk, but worth doing) where, at the turn of the century, Harold and Laura Knight were among the artists who rented rooms on the steep, winding streets that lead down to its harbour, and painted both the people and the place. The Cod & Lobster pub, on Staithes harbour, is lovely – and provides exactly what its name suggests.
South of Saltmoore is the town of Whitby, where Bram Stoker set his 1897 novel Dracula. He was inspired by the windswept headland crowned with haunting remains of a Benedictine monastery (painted by J.M.W. Turner) and the jet that still washes up on the surrounding shores, ensuring a glut of shops devoted to the semi-precious stone. There are also antiques shops – and you can take a boat out to sea, from where you can examine more of the coast, and, on occasion, see seals.
When it comes to eating on the Yorkshire Moors, and if you’d prefer to stay inland, there are several stand-out options. In Harome, near Helmsley, The Star Inn has a Michelin star. Around the corner, The Pheasant Hotel is a quintessential country inn overlooking a duckpond with an indoor pool – and it too has a very good restaurant, awarded with two AA rosettes. There is another Michelin starred restaurant in Olstead: The Black Swan. The Black Swan’s chef, Tommy Banks, also runs The Abbey Inn at Byland, next to Byland Abbey, another appealingly attractive ruin, again painted by JMW Turner. (The previously mentioned Roots York, in York, is Tommy Banks’s, too.)
Michelin-starred meals necessitate an appetite. In the Rosedale Valley there’s another newly-inaugurated endeavour by way of land artist Andy Goldsworthy’s Hanging Stones, commissioned by the Ross Foundation. An immersive 6-mile walk through farmland, woodland, and moorland, punctuated by installations that reference and pay homage to the history and geology of the land, it requires booking in advance – and we recommend taking a picnic. Not far away is Hutton-le-Hole, and the Ryedale Folk Museum, which tends to be a firm favourite for children. Across a 6-acre site, there’s a vintage chemist and village store, a traditional blacksmith, cobbler, wheelwright, tinsmith, and carpenter – and more. And there are historic houses. Nunnington Hall, which re-opens in mid-February, is a beautiful Georgian house filled with art, antique textiles and hand-painted wall paper, and there are a couple of resident peacocks in the very pretty gardens. Castle Howard in the Howardian Hills reopens in the spring, and was famously used as a stand-in for the Flyte family’s ancestral home in 1981 Granada television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited. Unequivocally grand, its extraordinary and richly ornamented interiors are often augmented by contemporary art programmes.
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West and south Yorkshire
More urban than the land that lies above it, there is yet treasure to be found in the area of Yorkshire that gave us Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and David Hockney. In the case of Sheffield, it’s literal – still a centre for silver-plating, the city has excellent antiques shops, and is where you’ll find the David Mellor factory. Guided tours are available on Saturdays, and there’s a shop and a museum with a collection of hand-made silver and other designs (which include traffic lights.)
Excitingly, Hauser & Wirth co-founders Iwan and Manuela Wirth, with their hospitality company Artfarm, are currently converting Bretton Hall, the 300-year-old manor house which sits amid the rolling parkland of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is going to become a hotel and the countryside outpost of the Groucho Club (which they own.) Based on their existing ventures, which include The Fife Arms in Braemar, and Mount Street Restaurant in Mayfair, it’s going to be exceptional – however it’s not due to open until 2026.
Until then, there’s outstanding art, with a weighting towards sculpture. Yorkshire Sculpture Park is the largest of its kind in Europe, and has permanent works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Goldsworthy (he studied at Bradford School of Art), and others, as well as a changing contemporary programme. There are indoor galleries as well as the park, where you can picnic, and enough to see to keep you happily entranced for hours. Worth knowing is that it is only moments from the M1, making it an excellent spot to break a journey. The same applies to the nearby town of Wakefield, which is also adorned with sculptures – there’s one by Annie Morris – and it is home to the Hepworth Wakefield, a gallery designed by David Chipperfield Architects with considerable space devoted to Barbara Hepworth (she was born and brought up in Wakefield) as well as major exhibitions of modern and contemporary art – and their own permanent collection. The third point in the sculpture triangle is the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, which recently reopened after a significant refurbishment – there are galleries, and a sculpture research library. It’s joined to Leeds Art Gallery, which has an excellent collection of 20th century British art.
And less than 10 miles from Leeds is Bradford – which is the UK City of Culture for 2025. The year-long celebrations have been conceived with a view to showcasing the rich history and heritage of the area, and the schedule includes performances by the Akram Khan Company and a nationwide drawing project supported by David Hockney. If ever you needed more reason to visit Yorkshire.
