Winter is coming

A veil shrouds the ‘Four Sisters’ — Hasty Bank, Cold Moor, Cringle Moor and Carlton Moor. Mornings are getting damper. There’s a chill in the air. Winter is coming.

I am half way up Park Nab on the Baysdale Road, killing an hour before the archaeological dig at a medieval chapel at Kildale. Today was supposed to have been the last day of the season but the dry weather has prompted a two week extension. Maybe that was too optimistic.

Low Farm is on the right. The shallow marshy re-entrant leading down to it is, I believe, the “ditch” referred to in the 13th-century charter granting the chapel by William de Percy, the Lord of the Manor of Kildale¹The Chartulary of the Augustinian Priory of St John the Evangelist of the Park of Healaugh ed., J. S. Purvis, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, vol. XCII (1936) pp 121-123..

If this is right then the field to the right of the “ditch” was called Symondcrofte in the same charter and is indeed recorded as ridge and furrow cultivation ²North York Moors Historic Environment Record (HER) No: 9776. I shall have to come back to this spot when the furrows are enhanced by retaining the last remains of a snow covering.

• 1
  The Chartulary of the Augustinian Priory of St John the Evangelist of the Park of Healaugh ed., J. S. Purvis, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, vol. XCII (1936) pp 121-123.
• 2
  North York Moors Historic Environment Record (HER) No: 9776