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WE'VE been on a flight of fancy chronicling the area's dovecotes recently, and now, thanks to Ian Hillary, from Hurworth, we're able to link the wife who survived Henry VIII with a North Yorkshire pigeon pie. Now lockdown has eased, Ian has been out into North Yorkshire to check on some dovecotes which we haven’t yet mentioned in our tour of these curious structures. Dovecotes, of course, were important in the days before refrigerators as they proved a fresh source of eggs and meat. They became fashionable accessories to a country estate around 1700, although the older, more rustic, D...

AT the end of tattie picking week in October, the countryside used to be adorned with piles of potatoes in pies – and groups of men brandishing strangely named items, like a riddles and igging sticks. Their potato pie, which they also called a clamp, was a means of overwintering spuds, as we told three weeks ago. “After the potato-picking, all the potatoes were tipped into a long row up to 60 to 70 yards long and then covered with straw and then with soil, which was dug out along the length of the pile as a drainage moat was created,” says Des Needham of Low Dinsdale, who witnesse...