This beautiful sculpture was created in 1874 by Giovanni Battista Lombardi in Rome. It depicts the biblical story of Susannah and the Elders which appears in the Old Testament in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Susannah is a Jewish wife in Babylon where she is secretly watched by two trusted and powerful elders as she bathes in her garden. The two men jump out at her and try to blackmail her by saying that they will tell her husband she has cheated on him if she doesn’t sleep with them.

The Commondale Brickworks and Pottery
In the 1860s a pottery and brickworks was set up in the village of Commondale. The pottery was short-lived but produced some memorable wares, and bricks with ‘Commondale’ in them can be found around North Yorkshire and the North East.