The Shepherd Lord of Barden Tower

Barden Tower is a useful place to park in the Yorkshire Dales; from its base one can descend to the River Wharfe and walk along it, avoiding the high parking tolls at Bolton Abbey. It is also historically interesting; here is a fortified house, re-built in the 1480s, to the specifications of the local baron, Lord Clifford, who preferred it to Skipton Castle, just down the road.

Clifford’s father was a Lancastrian in the Roses war, who fell at the Yorkist victory at Towton in 1461. Legends, probably exaggerated, suggest that the young heir was spirited away from Edward IV’s vengeance to inside deepest Yorkshire or furthest Cumberland until he could claim a royal pardon (granted in 1472), or until the Yorkists were themselves defeated (achieved in 1485). For having been allegedly raised in rural villages, he was called the shepherd lord. When the Lancastrian-based Tudors took the throne, Clifford was restored to his rightful properties, including Barden, which he improved.

Clifford seems to have been a thoroughly unpleasant man: abrasive, violent and openly adulterous. Whatever care or compassion his time spent among lowlier folk bestowed was largely gone by the time he assumed the role of northern Kingsman. A contrast, methinks, with the Shepherd King, Jesus Christ. He surrendered more glory than even Clifford lost, not to save his own skin, but the souls of all who would come to Him believing. To this day He remains gentle and patient, gracious and kind. He invites all who would become His sheep to dwell with Him forever, and in a finer mansion than ever graced Barden of Wharfedale.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.” John 10:11-18