Category: Easby Moor
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A brilliant day on Easby Moor for the Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team’s Remembrance Sunday gathering
The gathering took place at the memorial to the aircrew who died when their Lockheed Hudson aircraft crashed into the hill on 11th February 1940. The aircraft took off from Thornaby-on-Tees at 04:10 and failed to gain suffient height due to ice forming on the wings. It clipped the escarpment, ploughing on through a drystone…
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Ward Nab, Kildale
I’m actually quite glad the Jubilee is over even though it’s likely to be the last one we’ll have for a while. Public outpouring of sentiment is not my scene. The Last Jubilee. I guess I’m a reluctant monarchist, but I really don’t care. Neither do I care for Republicanism. What is the alternative? Whether…
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It can be done …
The relatively small patch of heather moorland around Captain Cook’s Monument has recently been strip mowed. This photo is technically of a strip on Little Ayton Moor, north of the parish boundary wall, but the area surrounding the monument, Easby Moor, also has at least two parallel strips. The moors are technically dry upland heath,…
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CSRT Remembrance Commemoration
The Cleveland Search and Rescue Team held their Remembrance Commemoration at the memorial plaque to the airmen who were killed in the Lockheed Hudson aircraft crash in 1940. See here and here for more details. It has been recommended to me that I read Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘The Gardener’ on this day. It’s a…
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Sandstone Quarry, Easby Bank
A bit chilly but a lovely morning. This is an old sandstone or ‘freestone’ quarry on Easby Bank. A ‘bank’ is a Yorkshire term for “a steep hillside, often with a road taking a direct route from top to bottom”. But the Ordnance Survey on their Six-inch England and Wales, 1856 map annotated ‘Easby Bank’…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument and Aireyholme Farm
The familiar sight of Capt. Cook’s Monument on Easby Moor appearing as the low cloud dissipates. It wouldn’t have been familiar to the young James Cook who lived as a young boy at Aireyholme Farm (centre of photograph). His father was employed there as a hind or skilled farm hand. However problematic Cook is in the…
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Monument Mine
A wet day so keeping it close with an exploration of the ironstone mine below Capt. Cook’s Monument. Winter is the best time for viewing the remains, before the brambles and gorse run riot. The featured image is an overview of the site. It’s been taken from approximately above what would have been one of…
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Aircraft Crash on Easby Moor
80 years ago today, 11th February 1940, a flight of three Lockheed Hudson aircraft took off from Thornaby airfield on a mission to search for enemy minesweepers operating in the Heglioland Bight off the Danish Coast. Within a few minutes after taking off at 04:10 one of the aircraft, NR-E crashed into Easby Moor. Ice…
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Disused sandstone quarry, Easby Bank
I heard somewhere that there is evidence of twelve sandstone quarries along the escapement between Capt. Cook’s Monument and Roseberry Topping. The stone gained from these quarries would have been used for buildings in villages and farms down in the vale of Cleveland and for the miles of drystone walls that divide the moors. This…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument
250 years ago Lieutenant James Cook was two and a half weeks into his first voyage on board the HMS Endeavour. He was bound for the Pacific Ocean where he was to record the transit of Venus across the Sun in order to devise a method of determining longitude. On September 12th he anchored at…