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Plan a day in Thirsk · 20 stops · 3.2 miles

The Thirsk blue plaque trail

Twenty blue plaques around Thirsk and Sowerby, in walking order from our door, with the story behind each one

Add to my dayJump to the stops
The Golden Fleece on Market Place, one of the stops on the trail

Why go

Twenty blue plaques sit on the outsides of buildings around Thirsk and Sowerby, and most people walk past all of them. They are free, they are outdoors, nothing has to be open, and between them they tell you why a town of this size has the shape it has: a coaching route, a railway, a market, and an unusual number of people who left and became well known somewhere else.

The town put the scheme together and the Tourist Information Centre has a printed leaflet with a map. This page is the same twenty plaques in a walking order that works, with the distance between each one measured from our door, and a version you can print or carry on a phone.

The names worth the walk on their own: Thomas Lord, who founded the cricket ground that still carries his name, born on Kirkgate. Alf Wight, who was James Herriot, four minutes further up the same street. Bill Foggitt, who forecast the weather from a chemist's shop on the market square by watching what the animals did. And a nurse called Hannah Packer, who left for Uruguay in 1882.

Getting there

Start at our door, 87 Market Place. The first plaque is on the wall of Boots, thirty seconds away, and eighteen of the twenty are within five hundred metres of the square. The last two are out in Sowerby, which is why the walk splits neatly into a town half and a village half.

If you are coming by car, Marage Road is the largest car park and a five minute walk in. The station is a different matter: it sits about a mile and a half west at Carlton Miniott, which is a half-hour walk or a pre-booked taxi, so plan for that rather than assuming a rank.

What to do

Walk it in the numbered order and it works. Four plaques on the market square, up Kirkgate and back for the museums, east along Finkle Street and Ingramgate to the workhouse on Sutton Road, then west through Westgate and Station Road, and finally south down Chapel Street and out under the lime avenue to Sowerby.

You do not have to do all of it. The town circuit is stops 1 to 18 and takes about an hour and a quarter without leaving Thirsk. The Sowerby pair is stops 19 and 20, forty yards apart on Front Street, and they are the two best plaques on the trail: Hannah Packer, who sailed for Uruguay in 1882, and Joan Maynard, who organised for the farm workers' union.

It is fifteen minutes out to them from the cinema end of town and fifteen back, so half an hour plus reading time. If you would rather not retrace the pavement, come back over Sowerby Flatts and up the beck instead. That turns the half hour into about an hour, and it is worth it.

Read the plaque, then look at the building. Half of these are worth more attention than the plaque gives them: the Cross Keys is medieval above the ground floor, the Golden Fleece has the arched coaching entry down its side, and the workhouse on Sutton Road is the one that changes how the rest of the walk reads.

Three of the stops are places you can go inside, and all three are on the town circuit. Thirsk Museum is the house Thomas Lord was born in. The World of James Herriot is Alf Wight's surgery. The Ritz is still showing films. Any of the three turns the walk into an afternoon.

The whole thing in one go is about two and a half miles and an hour and three quarters including the reading, so a long morning rather than a whole day.

Tips

Do the town circuit and stop, if you only have an hour and a quarter. Stops 1 to 18 never take you out of Thirsk, they are flat and close together, and they include both museums and the cinema. The two in Sowerby are a separate walk and worth keeping for a day you can give them properly.

Stop 20, Joan Maynard's house in Sowerby, is most of a mile from the nearest other plaque and the same distance back. It is a good walk on a clear day and a slog in February. Nobody will know if you save it.

Take a photograph of each plaque rather than trying to read every word standing up. Several are set above head height and a few have weathered.

Sunday is the quietest day for this. Market days, Monday and Saturday, make the square stops harder to stand in front of, though the market itself is worth the trade.

The plaques are outdoors and free, so this is the walk that still works when the weather has ruined the rest of the plan. It is also the one to do first if you have just arrived and want the town to make sense.

The walk

20 stops, in order

Distances are from our door at 87 Market Place, measured stop to stop.

Three ways to do it

The town circuit

Stops 1 to 18 · 1.5 miles · 75 min

Eighteen plaques without leaving the town, starting at the shop next door and finishing on Chapel Street. Every one of them is within five hundred metres of our door, so this is the version you can do on an afternoon off and still be back for tea.

Out to Sowerby

Stops 19 to 20 · 1.1 miles · 30 min

The last two plaques are forty yards apart on Front Street, and they are the best pair on the trail. Fifteen minutes out under the lime avenue from the cinema end of town, fifteen back, plus however long you stand and read. Come back over Sowerby Flatts and up the beck instead and it is nearer an hour, but it is a far better walk.

The lot, in one go

All 20 stops · 2.6 miles · 105 min

Walk the town first and finish in Sowerby, which puts the two best plaques at the end and gets you home along the beck rather than back down the pavement. Allow a morning, and start after breakfast.

  1. William Foggitt, and Foggitt's the chemists

    Boots Chemist, Market Place · 44 m from the last stop · 44 m so far

    The blue plaque to Bill Foggitt on the brick wall of Boots in Thirsk Market Place, recording the chemist's shop that stood on the site and Foggitt's fame as a television weather forecaster
    The Boots shopfront on Thirsk Market Place, the blue plaque visible on the brickwork above the fascia

    Bill Foggitt forecast the weather by watching moles, frogs and seaweed, and did it well enough to become a fixture on national television through the 1980s. He was the great-grandson of the William Foggitt whose chemist's shop occupied this site for nearly a century. Read the plaque carefully, though: the building it describes is the one that formerly stood here, not the one it is fixed to.

    BILL FOGGITT. THE BUILDING WHICH FORMERLY STOOD ON THIS SITE WAS FOR NEARLY A CENTURY OCCUPIED BY WILLIAM FOGGITT AND SON CHEMISTS. THE FOUNDER'S GREAT-GRANDSON WILLIAM 'BILL' FOGGITT 1913-2004 ENJOYED FAME AS AN AMATEUR WEATHER MAN AND T.V. PERSONALITY IN THE 1980s

  2. The Golden Fleece

    Golden Fleece Hotel, Market Place · 35 m from the last stop · 79 m so far

    The Golden Fleece blue plaque
    The Golden Fleece Hotel frontage on Market Place

    A coaching inn on the Royal Mail route between London and Edinburgh, with stabling for around fifty horses behind it. The coaching trade is why the market square is the shape it is, wide enough to turn a team in, and why so many of the buildings facing it have arched entries down the side.

  3. John Gilbert Baker

    Bakers Alley · 88 m from the last stop · 167 m so far

    The John Gilbert Baker blue plaque
    The archway into Bakers Alley

    Baker was born in Guisborough in 1834 and his family moved to Thirsk the same year. He spent eighteen years working in the family drapery on this spot before leaving for Kew, where he became Keeper of the Herbarium and a Fellow of the Royal Society. The drapery building burned down in 1864.

  4. William and Dorothy Wordsworth

    Three Tuns Hotel, Market Place · 156 m from the last stop · 324 m so far

    The Three Tuns blue plaque
    The Three Tuns, now a Wetherspoon, on Market Place

    The Wordsworths stopped here on their way across Yorkshire, which is the sort of thing that happens to a town sitting on the main road north. The building may earlier have been a dower house of the Bell family. Worth reading for the reminder that Thirsk was a staging post long before it was a destination.

  5. Thomas Lord

    14 to 16 Kirkgate · 257 m from the last stop · 580 m so far

    The blue and black Thomas Lord plaques together
    The house on Kirkgate where Thomas Lord was born, now Thirsk Museum

    Born here on 23 November 1755, Lord opened his first cricket ground at Dorset Square in 1787, lifted the turf and moved it to Regent's Park in 1811, then moved it again to St John's Wood in 1814, where it still is. Two plaques mark the house, one blue and one black. It is now Thirsk Museum.

    Here lived Thomas Lord born in Thirsk, November 23rd 1755. He established the first ground known as Lords, the home of the M.C.C.

    You can go inside: read about Thirsk Museum

  6. James Alfred Wight, or James Herriot

    23 Kirkgate · 34 m from the last stop · 614 m so far

    The James Alfred Wight blue plaque
    The World of James Herriot frontage on Kirkgate

    Alf Wight practised as a vet from this house and wrote the Herriot books about doing it. He lived from 1916 to 1995. The building is now the World of James Herriot, with the ground floor dressed as the surgery was in the 1940s, so this is the one plaque where it is worth going inside.

    You can go inside: read about World of James Herriot

  7. The Cross Keys

    Cross Keys Public House, Kirkgate · 67 m from the last stop · 682 m so far

    The Cross Keys blue plaque
    The Cross Keys frontage on Kirkgate

    Timber-framed and medieval behind a later front, with a monastic connection in its history. Look up rather than at the door: the upper storey is where the age shows, and it is easy to walk past at eye level without noticing the building is several centuries older than its neighbours.

  8. Thirsk Hall, and John Carr

    Thirsk Hall, Kirkgate · 72 m from the last stop · 754 m so far

    The Thirsk Hall blue plaque
    Thirsk Hall on Kirkgate

    Home of the Lords of the Manor since 1723 and extended by John Carr, the York architect responsible for a good deal of what Georgian Yorkshire looks like. The hall now runs a sculpture park in its grounds, which is ticketed and seasonal, so check before you plan around it.

  9. The former Register Office

    Finkle Street · 461 m from the last stop · 0.8 miles so far

    The former Register Office blue plaque
    The former Register Office on Finkle Street, now an estate agent's

    Built in the late 1840s to record births, marriages and deaths for the district, a few years after registration became compulsory. A small building for a large administrative change. Everyone born, married or buried around Thirsk for the best part of a century has a line in a ledger that started here.

  10. Thirsk Infant School, and John Bell

    Thirsk Library, Finkle Street · 49 m from the last stop · 0.8 miles so far

    The Thirsk Infant School blue plaque
    The former school and library on Finkle Street, now Family Life Church

    Founded in 1833 by public subscription, which is to say the town paid for it themselves before the state would. It became the public library in 1981 and has changed hands again since, and is now home to Family Life Church. Two centuries of the same building being used to bring people together, in one form or another.

  11. Fox Wynd, and E. B. Lamb

    7 to 11 Ingramgate · 144 m from the last stop · 0.9 miles so far

    The Fox Wynd blue plaque
    The ivy-covered gate at Fox Wynd, Ingramgate

    Designed in 1857 by Edward Buckton Lamb for the Frankland estate. Lamb was a Victorian architect with a reputation for going his own way, and this is the plaque where architecture people slow down. If you have no interest in Victorian domestic design, this is a short read and a pleasant street.

  12. Thirsk Union Workhouse

    Sutton Road · 228 m from the last stop · 1.0 miles so far

    The Thirsk Union Workhouse blue plaque
    The workhouse wall on Sutton Road

    The workhouse served forty parishes and was built to hold 120 paupers, the figure both the plaque and the Poor Law Commissioners give. It is the least comfortable stop on the walk and the most worth making, because it is the other half of the Victorian story the rest of these plaques tell. This is the turning point of the loop.

  13. The old Courthouse

    Old Courthouse, Westgate · 878 m from the last stop · 1.6 miles so far

    The Courthouse blue plaque
    The old Courthouse on Westgate, now home to Rural Arts

    Built in 1885 for the magistrates and closed in 1995, after 110 years of the town's small crimes and licensing rows. Courts consolidated into larger towns, which is why so many market towns have a handsome civic building looking for something to do. It is now home to Rural Arts, an arts centre with a café and shop.

  14. Thirsk and Sowerby Town Hall

    Westgate · 94 m from the last stop · 1.6 miles so far

    The Thirsk and Sowerby Town Hall blue plaque
    Thirsk and Sowerby Town Hall on Westgate

    Built by a company of local citizens who put up the money themselves, and designed by Walter Brierley, the York architect sometimes called the Lutyens of the north. It served as a hospital during the First World War. A town hall paid for by subscription rather than by a council says something about the place.

  15. The Ritz Cinema

    Westgate · 24 m from the last stop · 1.6 miles so far

    The Ritz Cinema blue plaque
    The Ritz Cinema frontage on Westgate

    The building began as the Mechanics' Institute, a Victorian invention for the education of working men, and became a cinema early in the twentieth century. It is still a working cinema, which after that many changes of use is the interesting part. Showtimes are on its own page.

    You can go inside: read about Ritz Cinema

  16. George Gibson Macaulay

    Station Road · 164 m from the last stop · 1.7 miles so far

    The George Gibson Macaulay blue plaque
    Station Road, close to the Macaulay plaque

    Born here in 1897, Macaulay bowled for Yorkshire and for England, and died on active service in 1940. Thirsk has produced the founder of Lord's and a Test bowler within a few hundred yards of each other, which for a town this size is a strange amount of cricket.

  17. Bamlett's agricultural engineering works

    Off Station Road · 209 m from the last stop · 1.9 miles so far

    The Bamlett's blue plaque
    Bamlett House on Station Road

    A. C. Bamlett founded the works in 1860, making harvesting machinery that went out to farms across the north. The railway reached Thirsk in 1848 and the works followed, which is the whole story of Victorian light industry in one sentence. The old works building is now Bamlett House, offices with a Tesco superstore next door on the rest of the site.

  18. The Lambert Memorial Hospital

    Lambert Hospital, Chapel Street · 400 m from the last stop · 2.1 miles so far

    The Lambert Memorial Hospital blue plaque

    Founded in 1890 by Sarah Lambert of Sowerby, in memory of two men: her husband, and his father William Lambert, who came to Thirsk about 1815 after serving as an assistant surgeon with the Grenadier Guards in the Peninsular War. Thirsk had a cottage hospital paid for by one family before the National Health Service existed, which was how a great deal of rural medicine worked. The building is now known as The Lambert, and is home to Herriot Hospice Homecare.

  19. Hannah Packer

    Front Street, Sowerby, opposite St Oswald's church · 728 m from the last stop · 2.6 miles so far

    The blue plaque to Hannah Packer, nurse, on the red brick wall of the house she lived in until 1873
    The brick terrace the Hannah Packer plaque is fixed to, with front gardens, iron railings and a tree-lined verge along the street

    Hannah Packer trained as a nurse and in 1882 left Thirsk for Uruguay, which in the 1880s meant a sea voyage of several weeks to a country most of her neighbours could not have placed on a map. She lived to 1930. Of all twenty plaques this is the one people stop and read twice. It stands on Front Street in Sowerby, opposite St Oswald's, forty yards from Joan Maynard's plaque at the other end of the list, so the two are worth doing together.

    HANNAH PACKER (1841-1930) LIVED HERE UNTIL 1873. AFTER TRAINING AS A NURSE, SHE EMIGRATED TO URUGUAY IN 1882 AND DEDICATED HER LIFE TO HUMANITARIAN WORK IN MINAS DE CORALES. HER MEMORY IS TREASURED AND HONOURED IN HER ADOPTED COUNTRY.

  20. Joan Maynard

    Lansbury House, 76 Front Street, Sowerby · 78 m from the last stop · 2.6 miles so far

    Maynard lived here until her death in 1998. She organised for the National Union of Agricultural Workers, became its vice-president, and in 1974 became the first woman elected for a Sheffield constituency. She campaigned for years against tied cottages, which let a farm worker lose his home with his job, and spoke for the 1976 Act that ended them. A proper walk out to Sowerby and back, so treat it as a second half rather than a last stop.

Photographs

Along the way

  • Stop six, the blue and black plaques to Thomas Lord on Kirkgate
    Stop six, the blue and black plaques to Thomas Lord on Kirkgate
  • Stop thirteen, the Thirsk Union Workhouse plaque on Sutton Road
    Stop thirteen, the Thirsk Union Workhouse plaque on Sutton Road
  • Stop nineteen, the Bamletts plaque, the last stop on the loop
    Stop nineteen, the Bamletts plaque, the last stop on the loop
  • Bamlett House, built for the agricultural engineering works founded in 1860
    Bamlett House, built for the agricultural engineering works founded in 1860
  • The archway into Bakers Alley at stop five
    The archway into Bakers Alley at stop five
  • A Thirsk Ducks cone by the beck, a few minutes off the trail
    A Thirsk Ducks cone by the beck, a few minutes off the trail

Questions people ask

The plaque trail, answered

How long does the Thirsk blue plaque trail take?
All twenty is about an hour and three quarters. The town circuit on its own, stops 1 to 18, is about an hour and a quarter and never leaves Thirsk. The Sowerby pair at the end adds about half an hour: fifteen minutes out from the cinema end of town, fifteen back. Return over Sowerby Flatts and up the beck instead and allow an hour for that leg, because it is a walk in its own right rather than a shortcut.
How many blue plaques are there in Thirsk?
Twenty, across Thirsk and Sowerby. There is also a black plaque to Thomas Lord on the same building as his blue one, at 14 to 16 Kirkgate, so you will count twenty-one pieces of metal on twenty stops.
Is there a map or a leaflet for the Thirsk plaque trail?
The Tourist Information Centre has a printed leaflet with a map and historical notes. This page has the same twenty plaques in walking order with a map, walk times from the market square, and a version you can print.
Do I need to book or pay anything?
No. The plaques are on the outsides of buildings on public streets, so the walk is free and works at any daylight hour without anything being open.
Where does the trail start?
Anywhere, but this version starts at Tea Time on Market Place because that is where the plaques are thickest. The nearest one, Bill Foggitt on the wall of Boots, is thirty seconds from our door, and three more are on the square itself.
Can I do the trail with a pushchair or a wheelchair?
The market square and Kirkgate sections are flat with dropped kerbs and are fine. Finkle Street and Ingramgate narrow in places, and the last stop in Sowerby involves crossing at Front Street. Stops 1 to 9 are the accessible core.

The walk starts and finishes at Tea Time Cafe, 87 Market Place, which is stop nought and stop twenty-one. Add it to a full day and the planner will time the rest around it.