J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Entrance of Wensleydale from near Middleham Bridge, and the Entrance Front of Constable Burton Hall near Leyburn 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Entrance of Wensleydale from near Middleham Bridge, and the Entrance Front of Constable Burton Hall near Leyburn’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Verso:
The Entrance of Wensleydale from near Middleham Bridge, and the Entrance Front of Constable Burton Hall near Leyburn 1816
D10956
Turner Bequest CXLIV 48a
Pencil on white wove paper, 154 x 97 mm
Watermarked ‘1813’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Burton Constable’ in relation to subsidiary drawing, top of page,
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the left half of a double-page spread continued to the right on folio 49 (D10957), opposite, recording a view from near Middleham Bridge to the north-west of Middleham. The viewpoint is close to that of the following double-page spread, folios 49 verso–50 (D10959–D10960), but is here looking in the opposite direction west towards Upper Wensleydale.
Turner has also used the top of the page to sketch a detail of the entrance front of Constable Burton Hall, which he annotates ‘Burton Constable’.1 Constable Burton lies about three miles east of Leyburn on the road to Bedale and the sketch was presumably made (filling in a blank space on the page) after those of Middleham as Turner journeyed eastwards towards the Great North Road. Constable Burton Hall was designed by John Carr in 1768 for the Wyville family who have lived on the site since Elizabethan times, and remains their private residence. The house is generally not open to the public, but survives much as Turner drew it, and may be seen from the gardens, which are open to the public from March to September.
For Middleham in this sketchbook see folio 47 verso (D10954).

David Hill
January 2009

1
Turner may be reflecting contemporary nomenclature. This is a source of potential confusion since there is a Burton Constable Hall also in Yorkshire, near Hull. The village here in Wensleydale is called Constable Burton, and the house generally so, but the current Ordnance Survey (1: 50,000) calls the park ‘Burton Park’.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘The Entrance of Wensleydale from near Middleham Bridge, and the Entrance Front of Constable Burton Hall near Leyburn 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-entrance-of-wensleydale-from-near-middleham-bridge-and-r1144144, accessed 20 February 2025.