This is a beautiful town in a gorge of the river Nidd with a castle towering above it on the top of a steep rise. The castle was built mostly in Edward the Second's time, though parts date back to King John. It is often used for jigsaws!
With its royal castle it was much involved in history, providing the first bolthole of the group who murdered Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. It was occupied for a time by rebels during Edward 2's time and much harmed by Scottish insurgents.
Its castle and all royal rights were eventually given to Edward's grandson, John of Gaunt, who was father to Henry the Fourth. This put the town firmly on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses and later it was royalist in the Civil War.
Two particular characters stand out. The first is Blind Jack of Knaresborough who lost his sight as a child but still managed to build miles of roads in later life.
Now we come to the ? part with the even better-known Mother Shipton. There is no doubt that a real person, Ursula Sontheil, was born near the end of the 15th century. There is no doubt that she made 'prophecies' either. From there on make up your own mind. She would seem to have predicted the coming of horseless carriages, metal ships, submarines and aircraft long before the existence of any of them. She also is said to have made some accurate predictions about her own time. I find her predictions of the end of the world of some interest. When I first went to 'Mother Shipton's Cave' well before 1991, the Mother Shipton industry, if I can call it that, ascribed to her a prophecy that the world would end in 1991. I gather that 'the original prophecy' was that the world would end in 1881 but somehow this changed - after 1881 no doubt. There was clearly no nicely-rhyming date to change it to after 1991 but I find that this 'prophecy' is now ascribed to someone else who fraudulently got it put down to Mother Shipton in the middle of the 19th century. However she is supposed to have prophecied that the world will end when the 'High Bridge is thrice fallen.' The High Bridge would seem to be one which has already fallen twice. Will this prophecy one day be interpreted as meaning some time [unspecified] after it has fallen thrice? On the other hand if the end of the world is actually caused by a major object from space crashing into it, as many astronomers think likely, it might seem unlikely that the High Bridge would be left standing through such a calamity. So ?, ?, and more?.
No doubt the legend seemed more probable because of the 'magic,' which turned rapidly to stone any objects hung close to the cave. Certainly the mineral properties which cause this effect are very rare - but magic??