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.

North Yorkshire Hotels, iknow-yorkshire.co.uk

We hope you have had a Merry Christmas and that it is a Happy and Prosperous New Year for you.

Things are quite quiet at the moment (as you'd expect a this time of year) but you can still keep relatively busy around here.

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, next door...

Ampleforth Abbey runs the most Northerly commercial orchard and is running Winter Taster Tours during February and March to sample the variety of joices, cider and liqueurs it produces.

Castle Howard (One of the World's Top Ten greatest mansions and grand houses according to the Lonely Planet Guide) is getting itself ready for the Spring at the moment, but the courtyard shops (and cafe) are still open every day (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!

Amongst other things, Ryedale Folk Museum is also getting itself ready for Spring, but has a Half Term heritage weekend lined up in Feburary. 

If you are a fan of contemporary music (for example, the type of thing that used to get played on Radcliffe and Maconie on Radio 2) 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. Martin and Eliza Carthy kick off the 2012 gigs list on th 17th of March, which is one to look forward to. There is a Band Room tradition of including a Bob Dylan song in the gig, so it will be interesting to see what Martin includes, given his 1960's links with 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 .

Unfortunately, the Cornmill Flock has been severely reduced in number, caused by a fox (!£$%&*!) killing most of the hens. We've also been made aware that as we have more than 3 letting rooms, by law (!!) we are not allowed to serve guests with our own flock's eggs (see the Defra website for more details...), so reluctantly, we'll have to withdraw this option (and eat the eggs ourselves.....). We are still planning to build the flock back up over time, but will probably do this slower than originally intended (i.e., as we can't use the eggs for guest breakfasts).

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.