Pot Luck

Barry Cockcroft is perhaps best known for his highly acclaimed film “Too Long a Winter” about Hannah Hauxwell, who lived alone on a remote farm without electricity or running water in Baldersdale in the Pennines. He later made a film about five children growing up in the early 70s on a Great Fryup Dale farm. […]

Not such an ugly duckling. A brood of eight cygnets with a pair of adults. And very tame, no doubt expecting stale bread. Could Skelton Pond be the fish pond mentioned in a 13th-century document? Or where a witch drowned herself after being chased following a murder? I have my doubts. Witches are so 17th […]

Long ago, or so the legend goes, a Danish chieftain met a sticky end amongst these rocky crags now known as the Wainstones, a name supposedly derived from the Old Saxon ‘wanian,’ meaning to lament. Perhaps our unfortunate chieftain found his doom in this rather dramatic boulder-strewn gap between the rock outcrops, now rather humbly […]

Traditionally there has always been widespread killing of both types of mustelids by gamekeepers. ‘Vermin’ control, they call it. On the moors and open countryside, it is generally stoats, weasels preferring woods and hedgerows. But there is considerable overlap in their ranges. The traps used are spring traps, of which the best-known is the Fenn […]

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 […]