Category: Bilsdale
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Tarn Hole
Had a trot up to the Bilsdale transmitter to see how the new mast was getting along. As its going to take 19 months, I shouldn’t have expected to see anything. There was just one bloke high up the temporary mast. What a view on a vernal morning. The view was maybe not quite as…
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Billy’s Dyke
So named after William the Conqueror, who was supposed to have passed this way in his harrying of the north. Here he met with a storm and cursed in its face. I’m surprised I haven’t posted about this 4.4km earthwork along the eastern edge of Bilsdale before but it’s not exactly the most photogenic subject. Another…
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‘Uitwaaien’ on Hasty Bank
I was reminded of a Dutch idiom this morning: ‘uitwaaien‘, which means to go walking in windy weather to clear your head or lift your heart. . For the first half hour or so, I took a favourite path of mine, along the southern flank of the long flat-topped Hasty Bank, the easternmost of ‘the…
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Dragon’s breath
Another outing dominated by low lying mists and the sun’s faculence. Bilsdale today. I wonder what our ancient ancestors would have made of these meteorological phenomena. That temporary blind spot after glimpsing directly into the sun — ok, our ancestors would not have been driving. And that low lying winter mist clinging to the fields…
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Cock Howe
A rouky run from the Lords’ Stone Cafe to Chop Gate via Noon Hill and Cock Howe. ‘Rouky‘ — listed in a dictionary of North Country dialect words as misty, damp, or foggy. I did initially type the word ‘claggy‘; for I have some recollection of hearing someone once using it to describe that familiar…
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Bilsdale
I didn’t realise it this morning but in the skyline is the Bilsdale transmitter mast that was damaged by fire on 10th August. And this afternoon, it was demolished. It is no more. Wish I had known, I would have got a bit closer. And there were blue skies too unlike this morning. The replacement…
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Stone Ruck
A rather dull morning but I somehow managed to miss the downpour. The high moors have somewhat woolly boundaries. Sometimes they follow the meandering of streams and other natural features, elsewhere they may be a straight line between landmarks drawn in an office or mapped as “Undefined”. The parish boundary between Whorlton and Bilsdale West…
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St Hilda, Bilsdale Priory
A wet miserable day so I’ve had to resort to architectural interest. This is St. Hilda’s Church, Bilsdale, built in the mid-19th-century replacing an earlier 12th-century one. I didn’t look but there is a stone above the porch doorway, which reads: “COONDDIT ECLEE SIAAM WIILLELMVVS NOBLIS ISTAA OO INTEMERRATE NOOMMIINNE SCE VIIRGINNIIS HILDE” This evidently…
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Bilsdale-Midcable
Bilsdale is a dale of two halves. Or should that be two ends? At the top is the ‘hamlet’ of Bilsdale-Kirkham. Lower down is Bilsdale-Midcable, a ‘chapelry’, the name is a corruption of “Media Capella,” a middle or midway chapel, probably an ancient chapel-of-ease in the adjoining parish of Harome. In 1132 , at the…
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Long lost pubs of Chop Gate
The most substantive village in Bilsdale. The name, Chop Gate, pronounced ‘Chop Yat‘ in the vernacular, is thought to be derived from the Old English ‘ceap‘, which means a pedlar (chapman), hence the ‘pedlar’s road’. Perhaps this indicates that maybe once numerous trackways converged here from across the moors and the village was a thriving…