Another photograph from yesterday. I am standing on White Hill, the easternmost bump of the so-called Four Sisters of the Cleveland Hills and gazing across the col at Hagg’s Gate, or at least what used to be called Hagg’s Gate, towards Carr Ridge and the highest point of the North York Moors on Urra Moor.
Hagg’s Gate, if you care, has rather fallen out of favour. The latest Ordnance Survey, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to erase it. The “Gate” would have been where the old road went down into Bilsdale past Holme Farm—now demoted to the status of Public Footpath. These days, most people will call the col Clay Bank, or if they are feeling particularly tedious, Clay Bank Top. Clay Hill Bank appeared on the 1893 25” Ordnance Survey, marked as the lower part of the climb. The latest O.S. mapping still refers to this stretch of the modern B1257 as Clay Bank. Higher up, just before the road from Ingleby Greenhow joins in, the old map gives us Cushat Hill and the junction itself as Cushat Gate. “Cushat”, for anyone still bothering, is the quaint local word for a Wood Pigeon.
My dad, never one to let accuracy trouble him, always called the col Hasty Bank. Technically though that is the slope on the Bilsdale side of White Hill, but then he was even less local than I am, which is saying something.
As for the thrilling geology, the rusty-red sandstone crag directly in front of me would have been generously revealed by the great landslip of 1872, which, with admirable efficiency, obliterated the old road up Clay Bank. The route had to be diverted, and by the 1920s, a few “improvements” nearer the summit made the climb slightly less severe.
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