A warm welcome to The Cornmill.

Your hosts are Karen and Chris Tinkler and we will be delighted to welcome you to our home. We have been here since 2002 and continue to look for ways to improve your stay with us, as some of you who have been here before will recognise from the pictures!

We offer Four Star Silver Award-winning Guest House and Four Star self-catering cottage accommodation on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, half way between Helmsley and Pickering and convenient for Castle Howard, Rievaulx Abbey, York and the North Yorkshire Coast.

There are records in the Domesday book of a watermill in Kirby Mills. The present Cornmill was built around 1750 and was a working watermill until the mid-1950’s. The mill race can still be seen via a glass viewing panel running beneath the dining room. The guest rooms are in the farm house (added around 1850) and the cottages are in what was the old stable block. All three buildings – plus reception - encircle the courtyard, which provides a haven of tranquillity (with seating, so you can relax). Please feel free to relax in the garden – in which we grow our own vegetables that we use in season – or wander through the paddocks (keeping company with our hens and the stray ducks) or try your luck at fishing on our stretch of the River Dove, which has brown trout, grayling and rainbow trout escapees from the trout farm.

There’s a wealth of birdlife in the paddocks, including our own hens, wild ducks, moorhens, stray grouse and pheasant, wood pigeons, etc., plus – if you keep your eyes peeled, a kingfisher.

We offer wireless broadband access for our guests and goose and duck down pillows and duvets are offered as standard, although we can provide non-allergy bedding or blankets if you prefer.

 

  

There was a feature article on us in the December 2012 edition of The English home. Although most of the shots are of our private accommodation, there were some shots of the guest areas as well. Interestingly enough (well, to us anyway.....), we were contacted about two years before and the photoshoot was in December 2011, so that the decor would be festive and photographed (in time) at the appropriate time of the year. It was also nice to see the road between Kirkbymoorside and Castleton featured in the Sunday Times In Gear 7 favourite country drives (15th of July, 2012).

Ryedale Auctioneers have a number of specialist, general and antique sales over the next couple of months and have a lot of items already entered. As they are only 5 minutes walk from us, it could be an interesting (profitable?) way to spend part of your Saturday!. You could also have a browse in Dove Antiques or the Daisy Garden Centre, next door... On this subject, our son is launching a career in antiques and has some items for sale on display in reception and the guest dining room. He is also on eBay (jprt94) and is planning to launch his own website soon.

As well as being a working Benedictine monastery and having a visitors' centre, tea shop and abbey shop (selling lots of Benedictine-made ciders, liqueurs, brandies, etc.) as well as lots of books and miscellanea ruled over by the dry-humoured (and very pleasant) Father Jeremy, Ampleforth Abbey runs the most Northerly commercial orchard and occassionally runs Blossom and Apples Tours.

The Penny Bank Cafe has a number of special event evening meals during the year. I'll  post details as they arrive.

Castle Howard (One of the World's Top Ten greatest mansions and grand houses according to the Lonely Planet Guide) is starting to open up for the 2013 season. As well as the usual Proms night (17th of August this year) there are a number of other activities on, starting with the Easter Fair. The courtyard shops (and cafe) are open every day thoughout the year (free to get in this area) and the butcher sells good quality estate-bred meat at very competitive prices (tasty, too....). Don't forget that Yorkshire Lavender is close to Castle Howard (at Terrington) and offers free admission too!

Similarly, the Ryedale Folk Museum is finalizing it's 2013 events, starting with a family Easter Weekend. In addition there is access to the permanent display of the Harrison Collection. 

If you are a fan of contemporary music and are interested in live music in a small, intimate venue with wonderful acoustics, you should check out The Band Room at Farndale, which is about 9 miles from us in the middle of the North Yorks. Moors. The first confirmed gig for 2013 is The Handsome Family and Snowapple on the 24th of May, followed by The Blue Mosquitoes Of Tasmania on the 29th of June, Ruth Moody on the 5th of July and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys on the 22nd of July. There is a Band Room tradition of including a Bob Dylan song in the gig, so it will be interesting to see what songs the upcoming bands include by His Royal Bobness!!
 

If you are interested in getting a flavour of local life, why not try the Kirkbymoorside Town Blog for some background information.

If you'd like some additional information about what's on in the area, please try the Enjoy North Yorkshire What's On page.
 

As part of the general maintenance of what are quite old, agricultural “working” buildings, we’ve recently replaced all of the roofs, plus installed new double glazed sash windows at the front of the guest house, which helps to make the house more energy efficient. To support this, we adjust the timers on the boilers to suit the weather conditions and generally set the central heating temperature at around 19-21 degrees which is in line with recommendations from various environmental groups.

We also use low energy lightbulbs and try to source the wood for the stove from either trees cut down in the paddocks / along the river or from wood that is brought to us by the river during the various “high water” periods. Guests can help by closing windows, turning down thermostats (although we understand that some guests do feel the cold more than others and may need to turn the heat up), turning lights off when not in use and reusing towels where possible. To help this, most of the hall lights are now motion sensative (i.e., turn themselves on in the dark when someone is there) so this eliminates the need to switch them on and off.

For the first 7 years here, we did have our own flock of hens, providing us with our own "home grown" free range, organic eggs. Unfortunately, we lost the whole of the female section of the flock, with a fox (!£$%&*!) killing most of the hens and the last one (poor soul) dying about 4 weeks later whilst brooding on some eggs. This has left us with 3 magnificent but unproductive "non-paying guest" cocks, who spend the days swaggering around the property making sure we keep them in the manner to which they've become accustomed. We were made aware just after the demise of the hens that Defra had made a ruling that properties with more than 3 letting rooms were not allowed to serve guests with our own flock's eggs (see the Defra website for more details...), but had to buy in "stamped" eggs, so we reluctantly shelved the option to buy in a new flock. Since then, as part of the Food Standards Agency hygeine rating process (we have been given a 5 (very good) rating, Ryedale District Council told us that this ruling is being applied more leniently, and as long as we tell guests that we are using non-stamped eggs, we can use them. Consequently, we're now buying in eggs from a local farmer who has his own flock. Please let us know if you would prefer to have stamped eggs, and we'll get some in for you.

We try to use vegetables from our own plot in season and also do get a number of seasonal items for neighbours who have local allotments.