Month: April 2021
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Great Fryup Dale from above Raven Hill
Regular readers will have realised that my latest preoccupation is searching old newspaper archive for snippets of lost history. Great Fryup Dale seems to have been a very untroubled valley – free from murders or unfortunate accidents. But I did come across a report from the Daily Gazette For Middlesbrough, dated 9 June 1879, of…
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Bransdale Church
It was pretty dreich this morning as we crested Shaw Ridge and dropped into Bransdale. I can not remember the last time the church at the head of the dale could not be seen. It’s a lovely little church, which Pevsner says “must be c. 1800” yet according to the parish website it was built…
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Bilsdale
On me bike today. Passing through Bilsdale on the way to Hawnby I remembered this 18th-century song I came across the other day: The BILSDALE FARMER. THERE was an old Farmer in Bilsdale did dwell He had but one Daughter a beauty excell. And many caming a courting but all to her ruin. But still…
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A lichen covered Highcliff Nab
I’ve heard my first cuckoo of the year. Cuckoo – an echo of the bird’s call – an onomatopoeia. Words come and go. Some words are just made up – neologisms. Shakespeare was apt to make up words, so was John Milton. In 1667, Milton was blind and impoverished, and it was on this day…
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The Wainstones
I was heading down a proverbial rabbit hole this afternoon when I stumbled across this little snippet from the York Herald, 25 Aug. 1849: “Gipsy” Party. — On Thursday week, a company from Bilsdale assembled on Wainstone-nab, intending to hold a “Gipsy” party on its summit. Wainstone-nab is a hill which overlooks the village of…
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“Its’ t’biggest Mountain in oll Yorkshire”
Roseberry made an appearance in a play once, in a farce of two acts called ‘The Registry-Office’ by Stockton-on-Tees born Joseph Reed. It was staged at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in 1761 and received the attentions of the Lord Chamberlain’s office because of its profanity and double entendres. An 18th-century ‘Registry Office’ was…
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Furthering the Right to Roam
Today is the anniversary of the Mass Trespass of 1932, when four to five hundred ramblers climbed Kinder Scout in the Peak District in defiance of the restrictions on access at the time. Their aim was to establish a public right of access onto the moors that were privately owned for grouse shooting. The movement…
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‘A Yorkshire Tragedy’
What to post about today? It’s either feast or famine. Could I muse misty-eyed about the feast day of a venerated Roman soldier who was born in Turkey of Greek stock and who (probably) never set foot in England and (also probably) never slew a dragon. Or I could celebrate the birthday in 1564 of…
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A Bransdale dry stone wall – before and after
Today, there are about fifteen occupied farms and cottages scattered throughout Bransdale, making a population of around about 40. At the beginning of the 19th-century it was about 400. There were shoemakers, innkeepers, millers, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, dairymen, jetminers, as well as the expected farmers and agricultural workers. Far outnumbering the humans in the dale are…
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Cleveland Hills
A peaceful rural scene. How different it would look today if the giant oil companies had found “black gold” in the 1930s. A forest of oil derricks and nodding donkeys? In 1938, the Gulf Exploration Company began drilling for oil in the Cleveland Hills. 30 men were employed, seeking the oil that the jet miners…