The Folly

Strong morning sunshine on a stand of beech on a green hill. The stand is called “The Folly”, the hill is How Hill, a gravel mound left by the meltwater of a retreating glacier. At 166m above sea level, it is not a big hill but it is tempting to say it gave its name to the township of Greenhow, ‘how’ being derived from the Old Norse haugr, meaning a hill or mound. The local primary school think so and have adopted the distinctive profile of this hill as their school logo. Greenhow is, of course, now part of the parish of Ingleby Greenhow, the Ingleby element of which suggests there was an Anglian settlement here which the neighbouring Scandinavian settlers named as Englebi. I can not find any records of a constructed folly on the hill so the origin of that name remains a mystery.