Discover Darrowby

Grassington is the home of the fictional market town of Darrowby in All Creatures Great and Small, the 2020 television series set in 1937. Based upon the classic James Herriot books written by Alf Wight which follow the adventures of a young country vet in Yorkshire, the series was produced by Playground Entertainment for Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, and PBS in the United States. The production received some funding from Screen Yorkshire. This series of the All Creatures Great And Small was Channel 5s highest rated show since 2016, with 5 million viewers.

Filmed in the Yorkshire Dales, the series is a new adaptation of Wight’s books, following the previous BBC series of 90 episodes that ran from 1978 to 1990, also called All Creatures Great and Small which is still regularly reshown.

The first series, which consists of six episodes and a special Christmas episode, was filmed in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first book in the James Herriot series. The series premiered in the UK on Channel 5 on 1 September 2020 and in the US on PBS as part of Masterpiece on 10 January 2021.

Filming for the first series took place in October and November 2019 and January 2020.

The cast of the 2020 episodes: Nicholas Ralph as James Herriot; Samuel West as Seigfried Farnon; Callum Woodhouse as Tristan Farnon; Anna Madeley as Mrs Hall; Rachel Shenton as Helen Alderson, Maimie McColl as Dorothy and the late Diana Rigg as Mrs Pumphrey.

Many of the Grassington businesses had their shopfronts transformed into the late 1930s and have stories to tell of their filming experience. Just click on the images to find out who the businesses really are. Skeldale House, the surgery, is a private house in Grassington.