page_title: Brimham Rocks
section_title: History of Rocks House
hierarchical_section_title: Brimham Rocks / Tourism / History of Rocks House
caption_attribution_description: Vintage postcard of Brimham Rocks, North Yorkshire, England. Showing Rock House, with the wooden Tea House beside it.
context_page_description: Brimham Rocks, once known as Brimham Crags, is a 183.9-hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest and Geological Conservation Review site, 8 miles north west of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, on Brimham Moor in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The site, notified as SSSI in 1958, is an outcrop of Millstone Grit, with small areas of birch woodland and a large area of wet and dry heath.
  The site is known for its water- and weather-eroded rocks, which were formed over 325 million years ago and have assumed fantastic shapes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, antiquarians such as Hayman Rooke wondered whether they could have been at least partly carved by druids, an idea that ran concurrently with the popularity of James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry of 1760, and a developing interest in New-Druidism. For up to two hundred years, some stones have carried fanciful names, such as Druid's Idol, Druid's Altar and Druid's Writing Desk.
context_section_description: This is a Grade II listed building, built in 1792 for Lord Grantley, who used it as a hunting lodge and "for the accommodation of visitors," who came to see the rocks for their sublime aesthetic. The visitor's centre, now called Brimham House, used to be called The Rocks House or Rock House, and between around 1792 and 1900 it was the home of Brimham Rocks' caretakers, and run as a souvenir shop, with an adjacent wooden tea house. In 1838, Rock House provided "tea, coffee or luncheon ... lemonade, ginger beer and cigars ... hay, corn and good stabling for horses," plus the use of a telescope. 
  The building decayed and was temporarily replaced with a caravan as a makeshift cafe parked below the house steps, but in the 1970s the National Trust restored Rocks House. From 1987 there has been a shop and information centre at the house, which has been extended for staff accommodation, and fitted with solar panels. At some point in the 20th century, Rocks House was renamed Brimham House.
caption: Rocks House with Tea House and market garden, pre-1914
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