Out & About …

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

Category: Cringle Moor

  • From beacons to buried treasure—Tales of Drake Howe

    From beacons to buried treasure—Tales of Drake Howe

    At the highest point of Cringle Moor’s flat summit is a Bronze Age round barrow named Drake Howe. A cairn overlooks the hollow left by Victorian antiquarians in this ancient monument. “Howe,” a term with a Scandinavian etymology, means a mound. But “Drake,” is that a name that carries a folk memory recalling the age-old…

  • From Green Bank to Cranimoor

    From Green Bank to Cranimoor

    Descending Carlton Bank, I dismounted the trusty bike to capture this photo of Green Bank, resplendent in the May sunshine and revealing its toponymic origin. Beyond is Cringle End, the steadfast nose of the moor of the same name. The old maps record this as Cringley Moor but an even more archaic name is Cranimoor.…

  • 18th-Century Valentines

    18th-Century Valentines

    I noticed new trees have been planted on Busby Moor, that stretch of Cleveland Hills below Cringle Moor and Green Bank. And so to St. Valentine’s day, isn’t this year flying by? Francis Grose’s ‘A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue‘, written in 1785, defines a ‘valentine‘ as ‘the first woman seen by a man,…

  • A temperature inversion covered the lowlands around Stokesley this morning, inching up the steep banks of the Cleveland Hills

    A temperature inversion covered the lowlands around Stokesley this morning, inching up the steep banks of the Cleveland Hills

    The sheep munching away on the col between Cringle and Cold Moors are apathetically unaware of the creeping cloud. The distinctive red earth is a spoil heap from jet working that has been burnt to convert the soft, crumbly shale into a hard, flakey material for use in building up farm tracks. The burning seems…

  • The Four Sisters

    The Four Sisters

    I am not sure who coined the term the ‘Four Sisters’ for the Cleveland hills of  Hasty Bank, Cold Moor, Cringle Moor and Carlton Moor. Maybe it was Martyn Hudson who used that term in his book ‘on blackamoor‘. They form a familiar view from the vale of Cleveland. From urban Teesside, the flattened aspect…

  • Kirby Bank — a battleground between a David and a Goliath

    Kirby Bank — a battleground between a David and a Goliath

    In 1854 there was a legal dispute over the boundary between Bilsdale and Kirby which has been decribed as a ‘David and Goliath’ legal battle. The plaintiff (he who brought the case) was the rich and influential Lord Feversham, Lord of the Manor of Bilsdale. The defendant was James Emerson who was described in the…

  • Making a mountain out of a mole-hill

    Making a mountain out of a mole-hill

    Cringle End, overlooking the tiny village of Kirkby. Or should that be Kirby? The name suggests some antiquity, ‘the farm by the church’, from the Old Scandinavian word for church kirkja, but the structure of the modern church is pretty much Georgian. That an earlier church did exist is without doubt. It was given by…

  • Cranimoor

    Cranimoor

    Just ten minutes earlier the “hog-backed sweep of Cranimoor” as Frank Elgee wrote was clear. Time to head back to the car before the weather deteriorates. I am on Cold Moor looking across the col of Little Raisdale, for want of a better name. At 432 m, Cringle Moor, to give the hill its more…

  • Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank looking luxuriant under a coat of fresh bracken, the bane of the moors. On 14 June 1932, the Daily Mail carried a somewhat brief report: Climbed 41 Peaks in 24 Hours Mr. Robert Graham, of Keswick, Cumberland, has created a 24-hours walking and climbing record in Lakeland by scaling 41 peaks in an…

  • Once more into the clag

    Once more into the clag

    Not much to see today above the 300m contour. This is the Alec Falconer memorial seat on Cringle Moor. Alec Falconer was a founder member in 1912  of the “Middlesbrough and District Countrywide Holidays Association and Holiday Fellowship Rambling Club” which went on to become known as the Middlesbrough Rambling Club. He was also an…