Seave Green: Through the Lens, Again

It is always a letdown to return home thinking the day’s photograph might be worth something, only to discover I have stood in the same spot, pointing the camera in precisely the same direction, years before. So it went with this view of Seave Green in Bilsdale.

Today, Seave Green passes for a hamlet, though it has never been more than a loose scatter of farms trailing south to Chop Gate. Higher up the eastern slope of Bilsdale, there once stood a manor and a chapel¹ “The North York Moors Landscape Heritage”. Edited by D.A.Spratt and B.J.D.Harrison. Page 98/99. David & Charles. 1989. ISBN 0 7153 93472.. The name “Town Green” suggests a medieval village might have clung to the hillside. The place name likely comes from one Nicholas del Seves, noted in the Yorkshire Lay Subsidy of 1301²‘The Subsidy: Wapentake of Rydale | British History Online’. 2024. British-History.ac.uk <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/yorks-arch-soc/vol21/pp46-56#:~:text=De%20Nicholao%20del%20Seves> [accessed 26 March 2024].

Most of the buildings here are built from local sandstone, topped with red pantiles. Among them once stood the Fox and Hounds Inn and a corn mill called Chisel Hill, which fell silent in 1930. It was later restored and turned into a soundproof recording studio for the singer Chris Rea³Burns, Tom Scott. “The Walker’s Guide to the Cleveland Hills”. Page 81. 1993. Smith Settle. ISBN 1-85825-009-9..

The Fox and Hounds had its share of drama. In 1869, it hosted an inquest into the death of a man found on the moor, lying undiscovered for weeks. His liver had failed, the cold did the rest⁴‘Helmsley. | Leeds Evening Express | Friday 23 April 1869 | British Newspaper Archive’. 2024. Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003884/18690423/018/0002> [accessed 26 March 2024]. Such grim proceedings were commonly held in the nearest pub. On Sundays, the same inn would host an old cobbler from Tripsdale. He would sit outside, selling clogs and slippers to those coming down from Urra Church. ⁵Burns, Tom Scott. “The Walker’s Guide to the Cleveland Hills”. Page 83. 1993. Smith Settle. ISBN 1-85825-009-9.. His derelict home still clings to the hillside above the ford there.

Had Victorian speculators had their way, this scene would be unrecognisable. In 1874, there was a proposal to run a railway down the valley, past the far fields beyond the beck. The line would have connected Ingleby Greenhow and Helmsley, burrowing through Clay Bank and Newgate Bank in two tunnels. But the frenzy of railway speculation had cooled after the bubble burst in the 1840s, and caution won out⁶The Ingleby, Bilsdale and Helmsley Railway. Bilsdale Study Group Newsletter. 8th October 2013. Online but no longer available: http://www.bilsdale.org.uk/assets/newsletter/1310bsg_newsletter.pdf [Accessed 7 December 2019.]. Had it gone ahead, the line would almost certainly have been torn up by Beeching a century later.

• 1
  “The North York Moors Landscape Heritage”. Edited by D.A.Spratt and B.J.D.Harrison. Page 98/99. David & Charles. 1989. ISBN 0 7153 93472.
• 2
  ‘The Subsidy: Wapentake of Rydale | British History Online’. 2024. British-History.ac.uk <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/yorks-arch-soc/vol21/pp46-56#:~:text=De%20Nicholao%20del%20Seves> [accessed 26 March 2024]
• 3
  Burns, Tom Scott. “The Walker’s Guide to the Cleveland Hills”. Page 81. 1993. Smith Settle. ISBN 1-85825-009-9.
• 4
  ‘Helmsley. | Leeds Evening Express | Friday 23 April 1869 | British Newspaper Archive’. 2024. Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003884/18690423/018/0002> [accessed 26 March 2024]
• 5
  Burns, Tom Scott. “The Walker’s Guide to the Cleveland Hills”. Page 83. 1993. Smith Settle. ISBN 1-85825-009-9.
• 6
  The Ingleby, Bilsdale and Helmsley Railway. Bilsdale Study Group Newsletter. 8th October 2013. Online but no longer available: http://www.bilsdale.org.uk/assets/newsletter/1310bsg_newsletter.pdf [Accessed 7 December 2019.]