The Summerhouse Field

A lazy day, tired after Lakeland exertions. I just managed to wander up with the dog to what the family calls the folly field but which the Tithe map of 1847 lists, perhaps not surprisingly, as the Summerhouse Field. By this time the summerhouse had been in existence for about seventy years. The map recorded all the fields in the parish of Great Ayton for the purpose of rent collection. The Summerhouse Field was listed as pasture/grass, which it basically still is although I haven’t seen it grazed for a few years now. leaving a meadow of tall grasses and wildflowers swaying in the wind. The tithe was originally a tax on agricultural produce and sent to Whitby Abbey but after Henry VIII’s Dissolution, Great Ayton’s tithes were purchased by the Marwoods of Busby Hall.