Month: September 2018
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View from the Cheshire Stone
And a fine view it is on a lovely morning. So easy to pooh-pooh the dire weather forecast. The large basin on the flat sandstone top does not look natural but no doubt it is. And judging by the rate of erosion of prehistoric rock art on sandstone boulders elsewhere on the North York Moors…
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Wesleyan Chapel, Bransdale
Since the Elizabethan Religious Settlement in the late 1550s, the Church of England had been the official church in England. By the 18th-century new dissenting religious societies had begun to emerge who refused to adopt Anglican principles and practices. John Wesley, an Anglican priest, with his brother Charles led a Protestant evangelical revival. He began…
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A weir on the Wear
A few hours to kill in Durham and wanting a break from the shops and touristy things headed down to the River Banks for a stroll along the Wear. On the far side were two corn mills belonging to the Bishop of Durham, known as the Jesus and Lead Mills. By the end of the…
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Boundary stone, Ryston Bank
Or perhaps better known as Newton Moor. The boundary stone is inscribed “T.K.S. 1815” and was erected by Thomas Kitchingham Staveley, the Lord of the Manor of Newton under Roseberry when the moor was enclosed. Interestingly towards the end of his life Staveley lived in Old Sleningford Hall, near Ripon, but named his eldest daughter…
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Blue-bores over Lonsdale
There’s about enough blue in the sky for a Dutchman’s pocket handkerchief or to patch a pair of sailor’s trousers. A Scotsman might say they’re blue-bores, glimmers of hope that the darkness will give way. Oh, I do like that turn of phrase, but can’t get out of my mind a motorway services just off…
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Waterfall, Hayburn Wyke
Today is World Cleanup Day and all along the coasts throughout the world volunteers litter pick to tidy our shores. On the Yorkshire Coast, with its quaint little waterfall, Hayburn Wyke at first glance from high above on the Cleveland Way looks to be clean but between the large beach boulders and stones are the…
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Whorl Hill, Whorlton Castle and Toft Hill
This view, from Live Moor, is interesting. On the right is Whorl Hill and to its left 1km away is Whorlton Castle. You might be able to just make it out, the extreme left of the photo. I was at the National Civil War Museum in Newark the other week and in an interactive display…
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As mad as an atter
In Dovedale Griff near Dalby Forest volunteering with the National Trust when this little beauty was discovered in one of their reptile habitats. Now I have it somewhere in the back of my mind that “an Adder” was originally “a Nadder”. No idea where this came from, I could well have dreamt it. But Google…
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Capt. Cook’s Monument
250 years ago Lieutenant James Cook was two and a half weeks into his first voyage on board the HMS Endeavour. He was bound for the Pacific Ocean where he was to record the transit of Venus across the Sun in order to devise a method of determining longitude. On September 12th he anchored at…
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Belman Bank
In 1937 Hunters Hill Farm, at the edge of the housing estate, would have stood isolated among its fields at the end of Sparrow Lane. The housing estate of course dates from the 70s. There would have been no commercial forestry on Belman Bank although the area below Highcliff Nab was named as Cliff Wood…