Category: Roseberry Common
-
Falling Rocks: One from Space, One from a Chopper?
On this day in 1795, a meteorite made an unscheduled stop in Wold Newton in the East Riding, thrilling a ploughman who narrowly avoided being flattened. Witnesses reported a dark object streaking through the sky before slamming into the earth, leaving a crater nearly a metre wide. It punched through 300 mm of soil, embedding…
-
Where are all the Holly Berries?
Two years ago, I posted a photo of a holly tree, heavy with bright red berries, a cheerful sight that now belongs to history. That tree has since been unceremoniously axed, part of the grand plan to reduce tree cover on Roseberry Common to a mere 10%. Why? To prevent the Common from succeeding into…
-
Roseberry Topping’s Hedgerow: A Conservation Success Story
Hedgerows, those underappreciated lines of greenery crisscrossing the countryside, are not just decorative. They actually serve a purpose: holding soil in place, shielding livestock from the elements, and making rotational grazing less of a logistical headache. They also connect habitats, encourage biodiversity, and even drag a bit of carbon out of the atmosphere. Of course,…
-
The Leaning Larch of Roseberry Common
A tree of little grandeur—stunted, battered, and twisted by all that the North York Moors can throw at it—leans, barely upright, on Roseberry Common, straining its gnarled branches towards Easby Moor, where the monument to Capt. James Cook RN stands. This, let us say, “larch” — and I am sure some arborist will leap to…
-
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,…
-
Mists, Mellow Fruitfulness, and the March to Winter
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; John Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” may well be a charming little tribute to the season’s so-called beauty and bounty. His “mists and mellow fruitfulness” certainly make for lovely poetic fodder. Yet, the mist draping the North York Moors today and the heavily burdened…
-
Beyond Rabbits, Lies Plastic—The Cost of Trees Guards
Wandering through Newton Wood on this beautiful morning, I felt the long-awaited arrival of spring. Sunlight gently filtered through the canopy, illuminating the lush greenery of wild garlic blanketing the woodland floor. Ascending further, I passed through an azure sea of bluebells, heralding the season alongside the blooming rowan and holly. On Roseberry Common, this…
-
A Path up Little Roseberry, Everything has a History
On the hills and moors lie many landscape features, their origins lost in the mists of time. Contemplating their history evokes me with a sense of curiosity. Take, for instance, the path ascending towards the deep notch in the Little Roseberry spur—it stands as a prime example. The erosion scored into the slope suggests either…
-
The Scars of Jet Mining on Roseberry Common
A casual remark recently brought my attention to this stretch of barren spoil heaps nestled just beneath the col between Roseberry Topping and Little Roseberry. This scarring owes its existence to the extraction of jet, a prized black rock revered for millennia, but especially gaining favour after Queen Victoria took to wearing it in mourning…
-
Parvus Othensberg
Many will be aware with the old name for Roseberry Topping as “Othenesberg,” dating back to a 12th-century medieval charter. The initial element, a relic of Old Norse, traces its origins to the personal name Óthinn or Authunn. The subsequent constituent, also Old Norse, derives from “bjarg,” meaning a rock, thereby bequeathing the toponym “Óthinn’s…