Out & About …

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

Category: Bransdale

  • A Monument to Ingenuity: The Story of Bransdale Mill

    A Monument to Ingenuity: The Story of Bransdale Mill

    It is said that the waters of Hodge Beck have powered a water mill here in Bransdale since the 13th century. The current range of buildings, a veritable monument to early 19th-century ingenuity, was built in 1811 by William Strickland, a man with grand visions of increasing the mill’s capacity. To this end, he exuberantly…

  • The Valais Blacknose: A Woolly Aristocrat of the Alps

    The Valais Blacknose: A Woolly Aristocrat of the Alps

    Imagine, if you will, a sheep so hardy that it has been roaming about the Swiss mountains since the 1400s. Enter the Valais Blacknose, or, for those who fancy a bit of local colour, the Walliser Schwarznasenschaf. These creatures, bred for the Alpine chill, sport a thick, white fleece that allows them to strut about…

  • Echoes of Industry — The Uncertain Future of Bransdale Mill

    Echoes of Industry — The Uncertain Future of Bransdale Mill

    Nearly everyone who lays eyes on Bransdale Mill is plagued by the same inquiry: What on earth is to be done with it? When the Feversham family graciously handed over Bransdale and its forlorn mill to the National Trust in 1968, the building was little more than a crumbling relic. The roof had collapsed, the…

  • From Battersby to Farndale: A Stone that Guides the Way

    From Battersby to Farndale: A Stone that Guides the Way

    Standing stones, those charming columns of rock, are strewn all over the North York Moors. Some mark parish or estate boundaries, others waymarkers or religious crosses. Take this small, irregular stone, for instance, standing unobtrusively just south of the old Rosedale mineral railway line. It is probably post-medieval, though it marks a trod from Battersby…

  • The Pulse of Life in Bransdale

    The Pulse of Life in Bransdale

    The North York Moors dales, after enduring months of rain and unseasonably cold temperatures, have erupted into a lush and vibrant green. The pastures, the crinkled oak leaves, and the dark crowns of the conifers in Barker Plantation all pulse with life. This intense greenness assails my senses: I hear it in the blackbird’s song,…

  • An Ancient Route into Bransdale

    An Ancient Route into Bransdale

    In days of yore, should you find yourself journeying from Stokesley to Bransdale on foot, or perchance on horseback, this very track would have been your chosen descent into the dale. It held sway as a vital route for many a year. This ancient road, depicted on a 1782 estate map under the title ‘from…

  • Bransdale Westside — a potted history

    Bransdale Westside — a potted history

    A clearing in the appropriately named High Plantation, elevated above the hamlet of Cockayne, affords a magnificent view of the western side of Bransdale. Bransdale is drained by the Hodge Beck, which, in medieval times, formed a significant boundary. To the west lay lands granted to Rievaulx Abbey, while to the east, they belonged to…

  • The Smiddy, Bransdale Mill

    The Smiddy, Bransdale Mill

    Doing some work at Bransdale Mill, specifically in the old smithy, known as ‘smiddy’ in the local Cleveland dialect, which is being repurposed into a wood store. This structure, formerly a dilapidated two-room, single-story building, had its fortunes revived in the recent past by the National Trust, which rendered it weatherproof with a fresh blue…

  • Stang Stoops and Slip Gates

    Stang Stoops and Slip Gates

    Returning to Yoad House in Bransdale, the weather was a tad kinder this week, not as harsh as the last. The forecasted rain? Nowhere to be found. And, surprise, in the afternoon the sun decided to make an appearance. That stone post in the photo? It’s part of what is called a ‘stang stoop’ or…

  • A winter’s view from Yoad House

    A winter’s view from Yoad House

    The view from the garden of Yoad House in Bransdale, where the emergence of snowdrops signals the impending arrival of spring. The tranquillity of the snow-clad fields extending down to the beck is lost in the mist veiling the opposite bank, and by the stark silhouettes of skeletal trees and precarious dry-stone walls, lend a…