Surveys of eight villages and more than 100 historic houses and agricultural buildings in upper-Swaledale and Arkengarthdale have been conducted by members of the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group (YVBSG).
On the group’s website, Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group (yvbsg.org.uk), it explains that vernacular architecture is that which can be identified as distinctively typical of specific areas or regions, sometimes in the building materials used, or the layout, or the use of rooms. The group studies Yorkshire buildings erected up to the end of the 19th century, after which regional variations were diminished by the advances of transport and communications leading to more-universal architectural designs and techniques.
Survey reports are accessible only to members of the group. However, an interactive map of the villages and buildings surveyed is accessible to all at the group’s website.
Separate from the activities of the YVBSG, for a couple of years around 2010, a small group of SWAAG members underwent training provided by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority in the study of vernacular buildings. They formed the Reeth Vernacular Buildings Study Group, whose principal output was the publication of a report on a house in Reeth known as The Green, thought to be one of the oldest houses in Swaledale but not previously studied by the YVBSG. The report is available as a print-on-demand book here: A Survey of The Green, Reeth.
Another architectural study of relevance is A Guided Walk Round the Buildings of Reeth, by Timothy Bagenal, published in 1968 by The Northern Dales Buildings Trust, and which might be available from online second-hand booksellers.
