Category: Easby Moor
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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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Battle of Inkerman
Remember, remember the 5th of November … Not because of “the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions”, but because it is also the anniversary of the Battle of Inkerman in 1854 when the allied armies of Britain and France defeated the Imperial Russian Army during the Crimean war. 635 British soldiers, 175 French…
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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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Nanny Howe and the Devil’s Court
A view across Kildale from Park Nab to the densely forested Coate Moor. The highest point towards the left is actually Easby Moor with its monument to Capt. Cook but this story is about a Bronze Age barrow hidden amongst the trees on Coate Moor called Nanny Howe. It’s a story about a witch and…
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Turkey Nab from Easby Moor
A view across the vale of Cleveland towards Turkey Nab, scarred by the recently graded track that climbs the bank. This is thought to be the start of Thurkirsti, the ancient route across the moors to Kirbymoorside. Thurkirsti does suggest a likely root for the name of ‘Turkey’ and seems more plausible than another explanation…
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Gribdale and Easby Moor from Cliff Rigg
St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain’ For forty days it will remain; St Swithin’s day if thou be fair, For forty days will rain na mair. So goes the well-known rhyme, and as it’s St Swithin’s day, and as it’s been a lovely dry day, a summer of sunshine awaits us. It all began…
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THE debauchee rewarded or, A Warning to Young Men
A sleepy view of Great Ayton village from Easby Moor before the crowds arrived. I came across this little gem the other day: THE debauchee rewarded or, A Warning to Young Men. Also, How he met Her while out a Shooting, in a Path Way leading thro’ a Grove, attempted to Ravish her, she was…
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Cook, Cats, Saints and Thieves
Capt. Cook’s Monument, dedicated of course to Captain James Cook, that problematic “discoverer” of Australia, who lived as a boy in the village of Great Ayton. When he set out on the first of his three voyages to the south Pacific, his ship was the HMS Bark Endeavour, a Whitby built collier. She was a…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument
A cracking day on the moors. Breaking virgin snow on Easby Moor, totally on my own, the first time since this pandemic struck. Capt. Cook’s Monument has been an attraction ever since it was built. One such visitor was William Stott Banks, a Victorian gentleman. In 1866, he published a guide book of Walks in…
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Edward Jenner, the pioneer of the smallpox vaccine
Today’s photo is of Ward Nab, or Cook’s Crags, the name by which the climbers know it. It’s on the southern tip of Easby Moor. A completely unrelated fact is that today in 1823 Edward Jenner, the pioneer of the smallpox vaccine, died. He has been referred to as the ‘Father of Immunology’ whose work…