button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 281:-
along the sides of the vale. From Skipton to Otley, the road is carried up and down the corner of the steep mountain Rombaldsmoor, when as near a one might have been conducted along the vale beneath. The inhabitants might have carried to the market the produce of their lands, and brought coals and manure at a little expense, if this plan had been adopted: but the prejudices against improvements and innovations are not easily removed.- At Bingly we were entertained with the locks: there are five or six of them together, where the barges ascend or descend eighty or ninety feet perpendicular, in the distance of about an hundred yards. They are elegant and well finished, but seem too deep not to leak and be frequently out of repair.
About four miles before we arrived at Leeds, in our way from Bradford, we were suddenly presented with the grand and venerable ruins of Kirkstal Abbey, full in view from the road. We stood some minutes looking with silent respect and reverence on the havoc which had been made by time on this sacred edifice. How much soever we might condemn the mistaken notions of monkish piety, that induced the devotees to lethargic supineness, and to forsake all the social duties of life in order to be good men; yet we secretly revered that holy zeal which inspired them to exert every power in erecting structures, the magnitude and beauty of which might excite ideas worthy of the Deity to whom they were dedicated; and also reprobated that fanatic bigotry which suffered them to decay and go to ruin, because they were once inhabited by a set of christians whose manner of worship was not orthodox. While we were moralizing thus on religious prejudices, the instability of the works of men's hands, and the fading glories of this world, we came to Leeds.
As the largeness and extent of this thriving manufacturing town, with all the elegant buildings in and about it are well known to you, and as you have seen every thing worth no-
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gazetteer links
button -- Bingley Five Rise Locks
button -- Kirkstall Abbey

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