Category: Basedale
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The Wicked Squire of Basedale
A photo of Baysdale to accompany this story I came across by Richard Blakeborough in the Northern Weekly Gazette from 1912 It’s a cracking story, which I fear would be diminshed if I attempted to trim it down. I am therefore repeating it in full which makes this my longest post ever (which I’ve split…
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The Cheese Stones’ rock fonts
Elgee suggests the name Cheese Stones , “probably” originates because the rock was used in local cheese presses. Now that may be the case but I do not understand why rock from this particular outcrop should be used for pressing cheeses. In the same article, appearing in the Northern Weekly Gazette in 1902, the future…
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Baysdale Abbey
Very little remains of the 12th-century Cistercian nunnery; a large farmhouse now occupying the site. The farmhouse probably dates from the 17th-century although I read it has a date of 1822 above the date. A priory was founded in 1162 at Hutton Lowcross, near Guisborough; but soon the nuns were removed to the village of…
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Chequerboard moorland
I suppose it would be petty of me to whine about this anthropogenic change to the moors created by mowing of the heather moorland. I should be thankful that this moor is no longer being burn and great plumes of smoke waft across the skyline but I fear the random patches of the old black…
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The Wishing Stone
This has been on my to-do list since the spring after reading a blog post on the Arcanum web-site. It’s a large, deep, circular basin on a boulder on Ingleby Moor that is speculated to have be manmade and used for ritual purposes: the making of wishes or prayers, or curses and so on. As…
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Shooting Butt No. 2 on Warren Moor
I will call this a ruined grouse butt although I suspect it is still in use. Anyway above the ‘2’ is a stone with a carved grouse dated, I think, 1975. I have it in mind that this was carved by Roland S. Close (1908-1978), the amateur archaeologist and an estate worker at Kildale. If…
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Crown End, Westerdale
The rigg separating Westerdale and Baysdale is mapped as Crown Head. That’s it on the right, rising to 236 metres (774 feet) at its highest point. Baysdale is the nearer valley, Westerdale straight ahead. Crown Head is best known as a site of pre-historic remains, representing activity between the Bronze Age and late Iron Age.…
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A familiar old barn in Baysdale
A well known landmark to anyone who has done any walking in the Baysdale area. Sited on the bridleway along the north side of the dale, from here a track climbs up and over, north to Leven Vale and Little Kildale. Tom Scott Burns writes that this track along the north side of the dale…
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Baysdale Abbey Bridge
A single-arch bridge crossing Baysdale Beck, near to and contemporary with the small Cistercian nunnery of Baysdale Abbey. Which puts its construction in the 13th-century, although “the attached piers and parapet are probably 17th-century in origin with later alterations”. Which begs the question of which bits are original? No trace remains of the abbey, its…
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Armouth Wath
The North York Moors is not renown for its coalfields, but in the late 18th-century, coal was being mined here but on a much smaller scale than the deeper coalfields in other parts of the country. ‘Moor Coal’ seams are thin, usually between 15 and 55 cm. thick and generally occur in three bands, the…