Month: March 2020
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Hawnby
Described as a “traditional nucleated settlement”, modern Hawnby really has two nuclei. The high one at the foot of Hawnby Hill and the low one centred on the old mill by the River Rye. Both have quaint sandstone buildings with red pantile roofs distinctive of the Tabular Hills. The village is mentioned in the Domesday…
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Face Stone
Community networks are rapidly being created following the coronavirus outbreak. Communities are coming together with various projects to try and support the elderly and vulnerable in our society. But it is also apparent that certain individuals are seeking to exploit the situation for their own gain. Perhaps this is a frailty of human society. At…
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The fields of Hutton Lowcross
A blue sky first thing this morning. Enough to momentarily forget our troubles. Plenty of runners and dog walkers. The hills are still open, they’re not in lockdown. Yet. Lockdown, an American word first recorded in 1973 meaning the temporary confinement of prisoners to their cells for all of the day. Quarantine, on the other…
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Highcliff Nab
“Overhanging the romantic and picturesque vale of Gisborough, a bold prominent rock rears its reverend head, hoary with mosses and lichens, and rent into vast chasms by the storms and tempests of centuries. It is skirted to the north with rich plantations of fir and venerable forests of oak; towards the south it is surrounded…
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Bilsdale
Upper Bilsdale, the dale of William the Bastard so the legend goes who became lost during his harrying of the North. The nearest farm is Whingroves with its inbye fields completely given over to the mass production of pheasant chicks. Inbye land is the most productive on an upland farm, often the closest to the…
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Webder Wood
A magical place. The lush green was spellbinding. Goredale Beck sprawls out over the dale bottom. Ash dominates its steep, verdant sides. Apparently home to two rare molluscs. A potential site for John Lambert’s mill which smelted lead ore mined high on Malham Moor in the 17th-century. Lambert lived with his family in Janet’s Cave,…
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Malham Cove
To Malham for the night. Not much sign of folks self-isolating; with the car park and roadside parking full, a farmer had opened up a field to capitalise on the tourists. And it’s only March. In the village, the Buck and several cafes all seemed to be doing a busy trade. In fact, the only…
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Site of Summerhill Farm
In 1658 John Coulson, lord of the manor of Great Ayton, together with twenty other freeholders of the village made an agreement to enclose the ancient open fields and common pastures dividing them up amongst themselves. Sometime after this, the farm at Summerhill, nestling below Ayton Bank, would have been created. In spite of its…
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Wesleyan Chapel, Bransdale
In most villages and dales of the North York Moors, there will be a nonconformist chapel. Sometimes it will be a Wesleyan Methodist, sometimes a Primitive Methodist, sometimes some other dissenting religion. Often there may be two in close proximity. Nonconformity played such a major part in many communities it was often the dominant religious…
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What, will these hands ne’er be clean?
The current concern with the Coronavirus disease has been much compared to the 1918 influenza pandemic. Although this is commonly known as the Spanish Flu, current thinking is that the first cases were in 1916 in the field hospitals of the Western Front. By the time it had run its course it is estimated that…