OUT on the Looking Back bicycle – not, of course, a modern, lightweight, carbon fibre framed bicycle but a penny farthing – we passed through the hamlet of Burrill, near Bedale, recently, and encountered the remarkable-looking Cowling Hall on a quiet hilltop.

It is a Grade I listed building and its oldest part, on the left, may be the remnants of a 12th Century pele tower. A manor house developed around the tower, and the lodging block and stables, dating from 1450, still survive just out of view the camera. The manor house’s great hall was demolished in 1700 and a Queen Anne hall – painted orange today – was built on its site by Henry Raper, who had made a fortune as an East Indian merchant.

During the Second World War, the hall was a billet for Canadian airmen from RAF Leeming, and since then it has had a variety of residents. In the 1960s, one chap went bankrupt after embezzling money from the local Conservative Association, and in 1990, anti-noise campaigner Greysham Macy, who lived there with his wife Mary, cut a giant peace symbol into his lawn as a gesture to the fliers from Leeming as they tore overhead.

The last mention of Cowling Hall in the D&S files is in 1992 when it was sold to an unnamed architectural expert for £200,000.