Rathmell
4th March 2025
5.3 miles / 8.5 km
147 m ascent
Easy
6.0 Naismith miles
Step by Step | OS Map | Downloads | Gallery | Fly through
In July 2024, we enjoyed a great walk from Rathmell up to Whelp Stone Crag, and that walk impressed on us that walking in and around Rathmell had a number of attractions:
The area is much less busy than the “honeypot” villages within the national park, and there are great views across the Ribble Valley to Settle and Langcliffe with Pen-y-Ghent in the distance. Add to this convenient parking and a short travel distance from Bentham, and Rathmell clearly has much to offer.
It’s also an attractive village in its own right with some interesting history. The walk includes an ancient packhorse bridge that would not be out of place on any Yorkshire Dales calendar, and toward the end we get to see llamas and alpacas.
Step-by-Step
We start at the Village Hall car park in Rathmell. The best way to get to Rathmell is from the A65 – it is signposted on the Settle by-pass between the Settle roundabout and Giggleswick station. Follow the road from the A65 for just over a mile until you drive uphill into Rathmell – the car park is on the left almost as soon as you enter the village. If you are using a paper map to navigate, then the OS grid reference is SD80446003. If you prefer Satnav, then either Main Street Rathmell or BD24 0LE will work, as will the What-3-Words tag dweller.trifling.thuds
It is worth taking a moment in the car park before we set off: It offers great views over the Ribble valley flood plain toward Settle and Long Preston and features an interpretation board explaining recent changes to water management in the flood plain.
To read more about this, click . . .
We head out onto Main Street and turn left heading toward the church. On the way we pass the wall mounted plaque remembering Richard Frankland, founder of the Dissenting Academy, initially based in Rathmell, but later relocating to Manchester and finally becoming Harris Manchester College Oxford.
Slightly further along we find the Rathmell Reading Room – an important community resource for this small but active community – the population of Rathmell was just 305 persons in the 2011 census. To read more about Rathmell, click . . .
The name Rathmell incidentally is believed to come from Old Norse rauðr meaning ‘red’, and melr meaning ‘sandbank’. Rathmell, in common with a number of villages in this area, has a long history of Norse settlement. The Reading Room sits on the junction of Main Street and Hesley Lane, and we go right here to head down Hesley Lane for a while.
Our next significant landmark is the old school and accompanying School House: Rathmell School was a typical village primary school with small classes, dedicated teachers delivering great results, and by all accounts, unusually good school dinners. A decline in numbers of children in the village led eventually to a decision by the School Governors and the community that it was no longer viable to keep the school open without sacrificing its high standards, and so the school was closed on 31st August 2017.
The school buildings were re-opened as a community and educational resource, and re-branded as Rathmell Old School. The current status is however unclear – there is a long running legal dispute between the Trustees of the Old School and the Anglican Diocese of Leeds regarding ownership. There was an out of court settlement reached in April 2024, where it was agreed that the fate of the site will now be decided by the Secretary of State for Education, and at the date of this walk, no decision had been announced.
Just beyond the School house on the right as we climb the hill, we see a fingerpost indicating our path toward Settle 2 ½ miles along the Ribble Way – we use the Ribble way for this section of the walk, but do not go as far as Settle today. To read more about the Ribble Way, click . . .
Once over the stile we keep to the right hand wall of the field and follow the well-trodden path through a number of meadows, heading toward a lovely, dilapidated barn 200m to the north. We skirt around the left hand side of the barn and continue, still heading north and still to the right hand side of the field until we reach Green Farm – a cluster of attractive buildings with the footpath passing through the well-tended gardens – so take care to keep to the marked path. The Ribble Way goes right at Green Farm by the way, don’t expect to see any reference to it on signage from here onward.
We initially cross one garden to exit onto a metalled road and then need to look opposite for the path continuing through a second garden. Once back in open fields we found that the path on the ground is a little different from the path shown on the OS map – so we recommend following our GPX – the difference is not large, and in practice the route here is clear and obvious.
Ahead of us now is a curious landscape which appears to be a disused quarry – although there is no confirmation of this on the OS map. We keep to the right of this feature and continue north for a while, crossing into the next field then heading toward a metal gate, or stone step stile if you prefer – these can be little difficult to see but if there is no gate when you arrive at the end of the meadow, follow the wall to the right and it will soon become apparent.
Just 200m ahead, we see a farm – this is Swainstead, and we need to keep to the left hand wall as we approach. Our path goes to the left of the barn and then picks up a track before passing the house which is to our right.
We see a cattle grid ahead and need to look for a metal gate to the left – this takes us onto a track known as Swainstead Raike – an ancient road that would once have been an important trade route.
We are heading left along the Raike, and following it uphill, but it’s worth taking a moment before we do that to look right where we are rewarded with great views of Settle and Pen-y-Ghent, and rather closer, the curious lumpy terrain that is Coney Garth, which literally means “rabbit hill”. The pasture was once an extensive rabbit warren – probably not entirely natural, as rabbit farming in areas unsuitable for other agricultural uses was once a common practice which generated useful additional food.
The OS map indicates “pillow mounds” as an ancient feature here: Many of the recognised pillow mounds are artificial rabbit warrens from the Middle Ages – we have seen them before – for instance on our Cunswick and Scout Scar walk. Coney Garth at Swainstead Raike may however have an even more interesting history: There is tantalising evidence that the site was used for other purposes – especially as charcoal and flints have been found in the upper mound, and the remains of square structures believed to be involved in funerary rites have been mapped.
To read more about this, we recommend this excellent website
We follow Swainstead Raike for the next 400m, as it heads southwest, before meeting a minor road. We go right here and walk along the road for a while to a farm with the rather functional name of Lower Sheep Wash. At this point the road forks, and we keep left to head downhill toward the next farm – Upper Sheep Wash – though perhaps you already guessed this.
Just before the farm we need to take care to notice the path leaving the track on the right to go to a delightful packhorse bridge over a minor beck – this presumably is where the sheep were washed, and it is entirely possible that although the bridge is built in a packhorse bridge style, it’s function was simply to enable shepherds to manage the sheep through the washing process. This would be consistent with our observation that it’s perhaps too narrow to allow a horse to safely cross.
Our path now heads back to the track we left before the bridge and continues uphill until 300m later we arrive at a junction. We go left here and follow the track for 1km until we arrive at a minor (metalled) road. Worth noting along the way are a number of walls where huge erratic boulders have been used in construction – the amount of work involved in moving these must have been enormous, and why this approach would have been taken rather than traditional drystone walling remains unclear.
As we arrive at the road we turn left and pass Hesley Hall, a dairy farm, to walk down the road toward Rathmell on Hesley Lane. We pass woodland on the right and note an attractive looking footpath through that woodland taking a bridge over Hesley Beck – perhaps we will come back to that another day.
Our next landmark is a farm called Mill Glen – this is notable because they keep llamas and alpacas. We continue past this and as the road heads sharp left, we continue onward now on a bridle way. 300m later we meet another (small) metalled road and continue left back toward Rathmell – we are now on Back Lane.
We follow this until it reaches the main road through Rathmell, and from here all we need to do is to head left to walk back down to the village hall car park just 200 away. As we do so, its worth noting the equine veterinary centre on our right and then the Methodist Chapel (on Chapel Lane), which closed in 2020 during Covid lock-down and never reopened. Planning consent has been given for this to be converted into a two-bedroom home after the council concluded it is no longer a valued community facility.
Slightly further along is the main church in the village: Rathmell Holy Trinity. Unusually for a church on a Bentham Footpath Group walk, we could find no link to Paley and Austin, Lancaster architects, but despite this apparent oversight, the building is rather fine, and worth taking a while to visit.
You can click here to download a guide
We continue past the church, noting the old post office on the right, now a dwelling, and the old post house on the left – which presumably held a similar role before the post office was built.
Bentham Footpath Group walks are classified according to distance and elevation change: This route is an EASY category example, with no particular challenges noted.
