Scugdale does not behave the way a North York Moors dale ought to. Most valleys here dip eastward, following the grain of the rock. Scugdale cuts north west instead, breaking through the Jurassic escarpment against the run of things. Geologists have never quite settled why. It may be the leftover of a larger dale that once ran north. It may follow old fault lines. It may have been carved by a determined tributary of the Tees, chewing its way headwards through the hills. Nobody is certain, and the valley is not telling.
What is certain is the faulting. No other dale in the district is so riddled with it. One fault runs the length of the northern side [on the right in the photo], dropping the land by roughly a hundred feet. Another slices straight across, north to south.
Then came the ice. The Cleveland Hills blocked the glaciers, and Scugdale filled with water, a lake some four hundred feet deep, trapped behind ice near Harfa Bank Farm. It escaped twice: first through Holy Well Gill, the highest glacial overflow channel recorded in North-East Yorkshire, then later through Scarth Nick as the ice withdrew.
People arrived long before anyone thought to name any of this. Mesolithic flints turn up below Barker’s Crags. 18th-century jet workers left their shale heaps on the southern slopes, following the tilt of rock that the faulting had already scrambled. Shale heaps that remain bare today, even by the bracken.
Sources:
- Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology of North-East Yorkshire. Edited by D A Spratt. CBA Research Report 87. Council for British Archaeology. 1993.
- Elgee, Frank. The Moorlands of North-East Yorkshire. 1912.
- Elgee, Frank. Geological Notes. Northern Weekly Gazette. Various dates in the early 1900s.
Leave a Reply