Watching over this popular approach to Easby Moor stand a pair of weathered gateposts, their stone faces mottled with centuries of lichen. They guard the path with the weary dignity of old sentinels, and one cannot help but wonder: did they stand here before Captain Cook’s Monument was raised on the hill beyond?
The answer, perhaps, lies in the slow, relentless creep of those pale crusts clinging to the stone. Some lichens advance at less than a millimetre a year, marking time on the rock like nature’s own calendar. The science of lichenometry—dating surfaces by the size of these curious growths—might offer a clue, though it is far from precise. Rainfall, air quality, sunlight, even the roughness of the stone all play their part. Nature, it seems, refuses to be rushed.
Had William Mudd known of lichenometry, he would have been delighted. But the method was not developed until the 1930s—long after Mudd himself had trodden this ground, pausing perhaps to inspect these very posts. Today his name is little known, yet he deserves to stand beside Captain Cook as one of Great Ayton’s remarkable sons.
Born in 1829, Mudd arrived in Ayton as a young gardener, employed at Cleveland Lodge. There he came under the influence of George Dixon, a man with an eye for the natural world and a mission to educate. Together they gathered specimens, taught classes, and inspired a generation of local men and boys to look closely at the life around them. Mudd, however, found his obsession—lichens, those extraordinary unions of fungus and alga that thrive where little else can1Mudd, William (1829–1879). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/72413 23 September 2004.
In 1854 he published his first work on the lichens of Cleveland, earning a reputation as the “Father of British Lichenology.” His studies took him across the northern hills and dales, from Ayton to Teesdale, tracing how different rocks bred different forms of this stubborn life.
Mudd’s life was not without hardship. Married to Jane, with four sons born in Ayton, he rose to become Curator of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden in 1864. Yet there his humble origins and lack of formal schooling marked him out as an outsider. His devotion to microscopic study damaged his eyesight, and his research waned.
He died in 1879, aged just fifty. His great collections now rest in London, Oxford, and Forres in Scotland, their labels still bearing his careful script. And here, on this quiet path from Ayton, the lichens he once loved continue their patient work—growing, enduring, and keeping their own slow record of time.
- 1Mudd, William (1829–1879). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/72413 23 September 2004
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