Wensley

Many thanks to The Bolton Estate for facilitating this camera's location and to The Yorkshire Dales River Trust  for capitally funding it's installation. The River Ure once supported catches of 3,000 salmon per annum, however pollution during the Industrial Revolution decimated the run of migratory fish. Now that The Humber River System is becoming cleaner, the populations of salmon and other migratory fish, including sea trout are increasing very quickly in the river Ure. The Estate actively supports The Ure Salmon Trust, which has been established to assist the recovery of salmon numbers in the Ure and promote the creation of a salmon fishing industry in its catchment. The signs of recovery are excellent with 35 salmon and 14 Sea Trout caught on our water in 2011, from just 50 rod outings and in 2012, 94 rod days resulted in catches of 50 salmon and 27 sea trout. Despite very poor fishing conditions in 2013, 47 salmon and 17 sea trout were caught. Encouragingly, the number of validated upcounts on the fish pass at Westwick was over 8,500 for the year, more than double the previous year. In 2014 the first three salmon were caught in May, which hopefully shows a continued trend of more fish running the river earlier and extending the season. Wensley gives its name to the dale Wensleydale.  For a century after its charter in 1202, Wensley had the only market in the dale and this continued into the 16th century. Plague struck Wensley in 1563, some surviving villagers fled to Leyburn, but the village recovered a century later when Charles Paulet built Bolton Hall in 1678 and became Duke of Bolton.The present Bolton Hall is a rebuild after a fire in 1902.