Hutton-le-Hole

OS grid reference:- SE 705 900

The charming small village of Hutton-le-Hole is situated in the Ryedale district of the North York Moors National Park and lies about seven miles to the north-west of Pickering.

The delightful village is one of the most popular beauty spots in the North York Moors. Hutton Beck meanders through the centre of the village, with foot bridges spanning the stream. Moorland sheep are allowed to roam freely on the long and winding village green, which belongs to the Manor of Spaunton, one of the few remaining Courts Leet in the country.

The first written record of the viillage occurs in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it receives a mention as 'Hoton' and consisted of eight caracutes of land. The name changed over the medieval period, from Hedge-Hoton to Hoton under Heg and then to Hewton. By the seventeenth century it was recorded as Hutton in the Hole. The present name of Hutton-le-Hole only seems to have appeared in the nineteenth century.

Several theories have been put forward as to what the suffix 'le-hole' actually refers to, but the most likely is that 'Hole' refers to burial mounds. Several ancient burial mounds stand on nearby Barmoor, so it seems likely that the name means Hutton near the burial mounds.

A large public car park is available at the top of the village and there are several gift shops, a sweet shop, a tea room and two pubs the Red Lion and the Crown Inn. The Red Lion pub is one of the most isolated and popular inns in the region, while The Crown is a traditional country pub serving food and real ales. The village is reached from the south by turning right from the Pickering to Helmsley road, just before Kirkbymoorside, at Beck Mills.

The Ryedale Folk Museum

Ryedale Folk Museum at Hutton-le-Hole, Yorkshire's leading open air museum, is set in 5 acres and boasts over 20 historic buildings depicting the lives of ordinary folk from earliest times to the present day. There are rescued and reconstructed historic buildings including, shops, thatched cruck cottages, Elizabethan manor house, barns and workshops.

The museum records the daily life of North Yorkshire people from the Iron Age to 1953. You can see a full-scale replica of an Iron Age dwelling, cruck-built houses from medieval and Tudor times, a Victorian undertaker's and 1950s post-office.

There are the tiniest of Neolithic flints, the magnificent cruck timbers from the sixteenth century and the 1850's Merryweather fire engine.