The Stapylton stands at the crossroads that Wass is built around, a country inn that started as a granary about 1620 and was licensed as an alehouse in 1645. It has changed names with its owners: the Staplyton Arms in 1739, when the Staplyton family of Myton-on-Swale bought the village; the Wombwell Arms in 1896, when Sir George Wombwell of Newburgh Priory bought Wass; and back to something like the original after the village was sold out of the Wombwell estate in 1924. It trades now as The Stapylton, with rooms upstairs and a kitchen that leans on local produce.
The menu shifts, but recent visitors have mentioned lamb rump, a meat pie, a pork-fillet special and halibut. One of them, Megan W, called the pork fillet and the halibut "sensational" and left remembering the waiter, Ben, by name.
Walk it off on the loop that runs from Byland Abbey up through the village to Mount Snever Observatory: 4.8 miles, about 250 metres of climb, a shade under two hours. The path rises through Abbey Bank Wood to the observatory, drops to Oldstead, then returns to the abbey; the descent turns muddy and steep after rain. The observatory itself is a roughly 35-foot limestone tower, built in 1838 by J. Dodd for John Wormald, carrying a long inscription in praise of the hills, groves, industry, peace and plenty in the opening years of Victoria's reign.
Byland Abbey is roughly 500 yards away on the mapped route. The Cistercian monks spent forty-three years shifting among unsuitable sites before they settled on the marshland near the village in 1177, drained it, and raised one of the largest Cistercian houses in Britain on the back of sheep and wool. They ran a kilometre-long channel from the Holbeck headwaters near Wass to feed the precinct; parts of it still carry water. In 1322 Robert the Bruce's Scots surprised the English army nearby, and Edward II fled from Rievaulx to York. The abbey was dissolved in 1538, and in 1819 Martin Stapylton dug into the church looking for the grave of its founder, Roger de Mowbray. What survives is Grade I: a near-full-height west front, an early-13th-century wheel window and medieval tiled floors, with an early Gothic design that shaped later northern churches, including York Minster's rose window.
The village church, St Thomas, is a quieter thing. It is a single room of local stone, built in the 19th century first as the village school and used as both school and church until the school closed in 1933. There is no churchyard; the dead are taken to Coxwold, the mother church, and St Thomas sits within the Byland Benefice.
Wass is compact and limestone, set between Ampleforth and Coxwold at the south-western edge of the moors, with a tree-clad escarpment behind it. The houses are mostly modest two-storey affairs with white-painted sash and casement windows and roofs of red clay pantile and slate; New Row is a late-19th-century terrace. Drystone walls and picket fences hold it together.
Getting here means the 31X bus, which stops at Wass Stapylton Arms on the run out from York through Coxwold and Ampleforth to Helmsley, or the road off the A19 through Coxwold and Byland; the nearest railhead is Thirsk. Helmsley, about six and a half miles off, has the shops and food for a proper outing. Sutton Bank is much the same distance, and its White Horse Walk is a three-mile round trip of about two hours.
The village hall, rebuilt in 2009, keeps a snooker table and runs to darts, table tennis and bowls, and the Women's Institute meets there for its book club and its walking group. About 130 people live here. In summer, many of them open their gardens for charity.