THERE has been an unkindness of headlines about the Yorkshire Shepherdess since the start of her fifth television series and the launch of her new book, which featured here a fortnight ago.

Everything from the stability of Amanda Owen’s marriage to the size of her bank account has been discussed in minute detail.

Looking Back goes down a different track. “Your article on Ravenseat brought back many memories for me,” says Brian Wastell, in Stockton. “My work with the GPO Engineers and the British Telecom took me all over the Dales until I retired in 1993, including to Ravenseat.” He kindly included a couple of pictures of his engineering work on the B6270 which runs along the foot of the upper dale.

Ravenseat is the star of Amanda’s Yorkshire Shepherdess programmes and books. It is above Keld on the north side of Swaledale, in a side dale called Whitsundale.

Brian Wastell and his family with his first car, a Ford Anglia, photographed just off the B6270 beyond Ravenseat as it begins to drop into Nateby and then Kirkby Stephen. Brian bought the Anglia - registration 3924HN - for £90 in March 1970 from

Brian Wastell and his family with his first car, a Ford Anglia, photographed just off the B6270 beyond Ravenseat as it begins to drop into Nateby and then Kirkby Stephen. Brian bought the Anglia - registration 3924HN - for £90 in March 1970 from

Its name comes from Old Norse, a “saetr” being an “elevated summer pasture”, so Viking settlers must once have used the tops for grazing their cattle in the warmer months. The first element of the name is “hrafn”, which is Old Norse for “raven”, or it could be the name of a person called Raven, just as Gunnerside gets its name as it was the “saetr” of a settler called Gunnar.

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However, it would be appropriate if it were named after the bird. Ravens were once common in Swaledale, and appear now to be beginning a comeback, resettling from the east. Ten years ago, Looking Back spotted an unkindness of ravens – a pretty unfair collective noun – spiralling on thermals above Keld. They seemed to be urging each other to go higher with a gentle, coaxing bark.

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That was our first encounter with ravens, and this summer we had a second: they were spiralling and gently barking above the swing bridge at Reeth, so perhaps their recolonisation is continuing.

Ravenseat itself was a little community in the 18th Century of 11 families of agricultural labourers and miners – Amanda’s woodshed is said to be the remains of an Inghamite chapel, Inghamites being a nonconformist group who followed the Yorkshire evangelist Benjamin Ingham.

Most of the Ravenseat miners dug for lead – Birkdale Tarn, near the B6270 at the entrance of Whitsundale, is the third largest sheet of water in Yorkshire, after Malham Tarn and Semerwater, and was made by leadminers to provide their operations beneath it with a constant supply of water. Some of them, though, traipsed over the tops to Tan Hill to work in a coal pit.

Access Rangers at work on the Coast to Coast path at Ravenseat Farm in upper Swaledale

Access Rangers at work on the Coast to Coast path at Ravenseat Farm in upper Swaledale

They deserted Ravenseat in the 19th Century as mining came to an end.

However, Alfred Wainwright marched his Coast to Coast Walk – 182 miles from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay – through Ravenseat in 1973 and now the popularity of the Yorkshire Shepherdess brand means that people are once more flocking back to Ravenseat, just like the ravens themselves.