Whenever I‘m Out & About, I rarely start out with any sort of plan. There might be a vague idea of a route, but more often than not, I just make it up as I go along. Some might call that reckless, others might deem it inconsiderate or just plain annoying, but I like to think of myself as simply adaptable. It is the way I have always been, and I have no intention of changing. Old dogs and new tricks and all that.
Thus it was that this morning I found myself on a path I had never trodden before, passing a farm of which I had not the slightest knowledge. I could not have named it if asked. Today’s photograph, then, is of Hasty Bank—its less flattering side, some might say—seen from a vantage point near Broadfield Farm in Bilsdale.
In the foreground, there is an old gatepost, a relic of a rural past often overlooked. These sturdy sentinels were once the anchors of fences, designed to bear the weight of heavy gates and remain standing for decades, if not longer, unless felled by the demands of modern farm machinery or repurposed as some quaint ornament in a suburban garden. In days when labour was cheap and materials were local, stone was often the post of choice. These gateposts, sunk deep into the ground, were built to endure.
The gatepost in today’s photograph bears a not uncommon arrangement: ‘L’-shaped notches that once held horizontal rails, just about discernible on its shady side. Its twin, long since gone, no doubt had circular holes for the rails‘ other ends. This hinge-less system was once quite clever, though I have heard tell that cattle, in their boundless ingenuity, learned how to nudge and lift the rails with their snouts, thus defeating its purpose.
More often, on the North York Moors, one encounters stone gateposts with holes drilled through them to carry hinges for a swinging gate. The post in the photo also features this very mechanism. Such a design allows a gate or hurdle to be swung open with ease, sparing the need to lift its weight. In this instance, the hole goes clean through the post, a wooden pole would have been driven through to protrude some 300mm or so. This pole would have been drilled with holes, through which a withy—a flexible branch—would have been bent and passed, forming a loop that served as the ‘knuckle’ of a rudimentary hinge.
Who could have imagined that a simple hole would reveal so much to us!
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