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Historic white cottages beside a lane in Garsdale

House Names and Local Places

Garsdale is not a compact village in the usual sense. It is a long valley, followed by the A684 from Sedbergh towards Hawes, with farms, cottages, chapels and small clusters of houses spread along the road and up the side valleys.

The old Garsdale community website described the dale in a useful local way: the road-signed centre includes The Street, while the other main centre of population is Garsdale Head, still often known as Hawes Junction after the former Wensleydale branch of the Settle-Carlisle railway. To locals, the whole stretch from Garsdale Foot to Mount Zion Chapel is simply Garsdale.

A House-by-House Landscape

The archived site kept a list of inhabitable houses in order from west to east. It deliberately avoided publishing current occupants for data-protection reasons, but it preserved the names of farms, cottages and local buildings that explain how the dale is understood by people who live here.

Names such as Pot Gill, Fold Gill, Hind Keld, Rackenthwaite, Smorthwaite, Roger Pot, Rose Cottage, The Hive, Paradise, Dandra Garth, Crossthwaite, Banks, Ing Heads, Garth Gill and Mudbecks are more than addresses. They are a map of streams, slopes, enclosures, former workings, farming families and small communities.

A row of old Garsdale stone houses with green and red painted doors beside a country road in summer

The Street and the Middle Dale

Around the middle of the dale, the old list records buildings and places including Low Smithy Chapel, School House, the Village Hall, Garsdale Hall, St John's Church, Roger Pot, Squirrel Cottage, The Hive, North View, Garsdale Street Chapel, Woodend, Rose Cottage, Pinfold Farm and Pinfold House.

This is the part of Garsdale where several strands of local history meet: the medieval church site, the former school, the village hall, chapel life, farming, and the road through the dale. It is also where visitors start to see how closely Garsdale's house names sit beside its religious and farming history.

A historical photograph looking down over a Garsdale valley of stone farmhouses, barns and dry-stone walls

Garsdale Head and Hawes Junction

At the eastern end of the dale, the old house list changes character as the railway becomes part of the story. It records Junction Cottage, formerly the Junction Inn, along with Clough House, Clough Cottage, East Clough, Moorland View, the Railway Cottages, Mount Zion Chapel, Brookside, West Mudbecks, East Mudbecks, Dandrymire and Low Moor.

Those names sit close to Garsdale Station, the Dandrymire Viaduct and the road over to Dent. They help explain why Garsdale Head still carries the older railway name Hawes Junction, even though the Wensleydale branch line is long gone.

Grisedale Names

The neighbouring valley of Grisedale has its own group of names: Blakemire, Mouse Syke, Chapel House, Beck House, Reachey, Aldershaw, Moor Rigg, East House and Fea Fow. Many are known from accounts of Grisedale as "the dale that died", but the names remain part of the living local geography.

Names ending in -syke, -thwaite and -garth are especially worth noticing. They point back to Old Norse influence in the Dales: a syke is a small stream, a thwaite is a clearing, and a garth is an enclosure or paddock.

Using This Guide

This page is intended as local-history context for visitors, walkers and people researching Garsdale, not as a current residents' directory. Some names may have changed use over time, some buildings are private homes, and many are working farms. Please use public rights of way, respect gates and signs, and do not treat old house names as permission to enter private land.

Source Note

The main source for this page is the archived Garsdale community website, which preserved a west-to-east house list and credited Kevin Lancaster of Sedbergh and District History Society for information he had compiled. The archive is valuable local evidence, but it should be read as historical material rather than a current gazetteer.

References