Cowside
Photo: Landmark Trust

VISITORS to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority's Yoredale offices in Bainbridge will be able to see the work of a new artist from next week.

Janet Rawlins has recently completed a large collage of Cowside, a late seventeenth-century farmstead in Langstrothdale that the national building preservation charity Landmark Trust wants to restore at a cost of £600,000.

She is hoping the collage - which will be on display at Yoredale as part of her show - will help raise cash for the Trust's appeal.

The Trust describes Cowside as special both for its remote setting deep in Upper Wharfedale and for its rarity as an unaltered vernacular farmhouse.

The house stands on a grassy shelf on a steep gritstone hillside facing south onto the fell which, at one time, provided summer grazing to cattle from Fountains Abbey

Janet pioneered the art of painting with fabric 50 years ago and she has been a frequent exhibitor at the Authority-owned Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes.

She lives in Bainbridge and uses the local landscapes as inspiration.

Her exhibition starts on 3 September and runs for two months.

Richard Burnett, the Authority's Head of Finance and Resources, said: "Janet is the latest in a series of local artists who have been invited to use the reception area at Yoredale to showcase their work.

"The reaction from visitors has been fantastic and the exhibitions have proved to be very popular as well as adding another dimension to the purpose of the offices."

• For more information on Cowside and to make a donation, visit the Trust's website at www.landmarktrust.org.uk