Yorkshire Moors

Villages & Places

Helmsley

Helmsley is the handsome market town at the western gateway to the Moors — the only town actually within the National Park — with a castle above its square, a famous walled garden, and one of England's great ruined abbeys just down the road.

Honey-coloured stone buildings around the market square at Helmsley in the North York Moors

Placeholder photograph — real imagery to follow.

The town

An attractive market square (with a Friday market), independent shops, galleries, delis and good places to eat fill a conservation-area town of some fifty listed buildings. It's a natural base for the western Moors and the start of the Cleveland Way, the long-distance trail that runs to the coast.

Castle, garden and park

Helmsley Castle, cared for by English Heritage, has stood over the town since the 12th century and survived a three-month siege in the Civil War. Beside it, the beautiful Helmsley Walled Garden is a restored kitchen and flower garden, and on the edge of town Duncombe Park spreads its grand house across hundreds of acres of gardens and parkland.

Rievaulx Abbey

A few miles away in a wooded valley stand the soaring ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, one of the great Cistercian monasteries of medieval England until Henry VIII's dissolution — reachable on a lovely seven-mile circular walk from the town. Looking for a base? Note that Helmsley is on the far, western side of the park, a bit further from Allerston — see where to stay.