Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Category: North York Moors

  • Jackson’s Bank—Medieval Trod

    Jackson’s Bank—Medieval Trod

    As you reach the top of Jackson’s Bank, it is hard not to imagine that, at the turn of the last century, weary walkers resting upon these boulders were serenaded by the rather pastoral sounds of iron-laden trucks grinding, screeching, and clattering their way down that incline on the opposite side of Greenhow Botton. This…

  • Westworth Reservoir: Gorse and Other Triumphs of Nature

    Westworth Reservoir: Gorse and Other Triumphs of Nature

    In my Guisborough days, I would often run a circuit round Westworth Reservoir. This morning, in a fit of nostalgia, I returned to that old stomping ground. How changed it is. The former reservoir bed has given way to a jungle of gorse, now sprawling with abandon, save for a dank, overgrown marsh clinging feebly…

  • Roseberry Common and the “Tragedy” of Our Shared Resources

    Roseberry Common and the “Tragedy” of Our Shared Resources

    “Roseberry Common” — the name, so familiar, may scarcely remind us that this is indeed Common land, open for grazing, fuel, and other resources by the Commoners. Though now under the care of the National Trust, Commoners with lingering rights to this land persist like relics, a living exhibit the Trust must tread carefully around,…

  • Crime, Concealment, and Moral Panic in Newton-under-Roseberry

    Crime, Concealment, and Moral Panic in Newton-under-Roseberry

    On the 6th of November, 1847, the Yorkshire Gazette regaled its readers with a dark tale from the village of Newton-under-Roseberry. “Concealment of Child Birth. — On Saturday last, the body of a newly born female child was found in a privy, in the village of Newton-under-Roseberry, by a person named Jackson, who nailed fast…

  • Cod Beck Reservoir: The Calm Before the Chaos

    Cod Beck Reservoir: The Calm Before the Chaos

    Ah, the poetic serenity of dawn at Cod Beck Reservoir—a perfect place for nature’s calm to lull you into a false sense of security. Mist drapes over the water as greylag geese glide serenely, trees half-hidden in fog add a touch of mystery, and a skeletal Goat Willow, I’m guessing here, stands at the water’s…

  • Whisky, Oats, and Onions: The Drovers’ Passage through Scarth Nick

    Whisky, Oats, and Onions: The Drovers’ Passage through Scarth Nick

    In yesterday‘s posting, I told a tale of smugglers darting across the moors, slyly evading the prying gaze of the customs men who, I am sure, looked on in unmitigated fury at their repeated failings. The same wild terrain, it seems, was trampled not only by scoundrels with their wares, but by drovers steering whole…

  • Smugglers of the North York Moors

    Smugglers of the North York Moors

    For some inexplicable reason, I find myself riveted by this ruined barn overlooking above the Esk Valley railway. I have taken to photographing it with a slavish devotion, each time I pass, but usually something with more interest has turned up. This barn, apparently, is recorded on the North York Moors historical monuments database, albeit…

  • Armouth Wath: “Here Coal was Expected”

    Armouth Wath: “Here Coal was Expected”

    In March of 1803, a notice in the York Courant trumpeted the forthcoming sale by auction of the “MANOR and DEMESNE of BASEDALE ABBEY,” an estate furnished with a “COALMINE supposed very considerable.” One imagines that the allure of a rich seam of coal lent the whole sale a dash of speculative glamour. The “considerable”…

  • Paradise Lost? The Noble Art of Swidden Burning

    Paradise Lost? The Noble Art of Swidden Burning

    Ah, the noble swiddens! That iconic mosaic left by the benevolent, precise art of setting fire to the countryside, all for the good of its charming inhabitants: grouse—who, one imagines, must dance a jolly jig singing ‘hahahahahaha‘ when those nutritious shoots emerge. How delightful to know that we can rely on a “low-temperature” burn, barely a…

  • From a Templars’ Retreat to a Cobbler’s Last Stand: The Many Lives of Brathwatte

    From a Templars’ Retreat to a Cobbler’s Last Stand: The Many Lives of Brathwatte

    I see a rock outcrop on the crest of a hill and feel a maddening urge to investigate. So, naturally, I ended up on Tor Hill Crags, gazing down over Westerdale. Or, perhaps, that should be Camisedale—a name found in the Domesday Book, while Westerdale, notably, is not. The general presumption is that they are,…