Did You Know

Entrance to the Park is totally free.

Episodes of BBC's The Chase and ITV's Emmerdale and Heartbeat have both been filmed in the area.

From Surprise View, on a clear day you can see Simons Seat, Norwood Top, Almscliffe Crag, the White
Horse near Sutton Bank and even York Minster.

The painter J.M.W. Turner used to stay with his friend Walter Fawkes at Farnley Hall at the foot of the
Chevin. Recalling a day in the autumn of 1810 Fawkes' son, Hawkesworth, remembered a storm that
inspired one of Turner's major paintings;

'Hawkey! Hawkey! Come here! Come here! Look at this thunder-storm. Isn't it grand? isn't it wonderful?
- isn't it sublime?' All this time he was making notes of its form and colour on the back of a letter. I
proposed some better drawing-block, but he said it did very well. He was absorbed - he was entranced.
There was the storm rolling and sweeping and shafting out its lightning over the Yorkshire hills.
Presently the storm passed and he finished. 'There Hawkey,' said he, 'In two years you will see this
again, and call it Hannibal Crossing the Alps.'

'The storm rolled . . .', writes David Hill in his account of one of the artist's sketching expeditions in the
Yorkshire Dales, In Turner's Footsteps, ' and Turner's imagination marched at the head of an army of
elephants across the rocky sweeps of Otley Chevin.'

Stone from the quarry on The Chevin was used in the foundations for the Houses of Parliament in the
1830's. Bridlington Pier, Scarborough Marine Drive and Wearmouth Bridge in Sunderland also used
stone taken from Otley.

The famous furniture maker and designer Thomas Chippendale was born in Otley in 1718 and worked at
Farnley Hall. 170 trees were planted on The Chevin to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth and The
Queen donated the first tree from her Sandringham Estate.

The White House building was a former farmhouse which was marked on a 1847 map as a ruin. It was
renovated by Leeds City Council and is now the base for Parks and Countryside staff who look after the
site.

forest