Category: Kildale
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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…
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Percy Cross Rigg
Without looking at the map, I would have said the track along Percy Cross Rigg, or to use its Medieval name, Ernaldsti, on its journey south across Great Ayton and Kildale Moors, and on to Westerdale follows a pretty straight route. But this telescopic photo shows just how sinuous it actually is. The name is…
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A view across Kildale to the side valley of Lonsdale.
In the right distance is ‘New Row’, a terrace of six single story cottages built by the Lonsdale Mining Company in 1865-7, and added to by six 2-story houses for the Whinstone miners. In front of New Row is the Kildale Sports Field, newly decked out for the forthcoming football season. In the late 1970s,…
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Was this the site of the stronghold of the de Percys?
On the Ordnance Survey map this raised mound is annotated as a ‘motte‘, a flat-topped mound normally associated with a motte-and-bailey castle. John Walker Ord cites the Elizabethan antiquarian William Camden as being the only mention of a ‘castle’ at Kildale. it is now thought the mound is a naturally occuring knoll and the site…
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Kildale
An autumnal morning. Once the cloud had dissipated, the top of Park Nab opened up a full view of this interesting valley once flooded, dammed up by the Tees ice sheet. The slight high ground on the valley floor to the left is a terminal moraine and the furthest extent of the glacier. Here marks…
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River Leven at Kildale
In spite of yesterday’s rain the River Leven looks very tranquil. Unlike the state it would have been on the 21st July, 1840, when heavy rain caused the Kildale fish pond to burst causing flooding downstream and washing away Kildale Mill and two stone bridges.
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Lower Lonsdale with Kildale beyond
Before the Norman Conquest Kildale was held by Orme, a thane of the king, who also seems to have been associated with Ormesby. When the church was rebuilt in 1868, several Scandinavian skeletons were discovered along with old swords, daggers. etc., all dating from the 9th-century. Perhaps one of these was Killi, from whom Kildale…
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Unfinished millstone on Kildale Moor
A short excursion to look at the unfinished millstone just off the Baysdale road. I’ve been before but the same old questions remain. Why was it abandoned? Who abandoned it? And when? The NYM Historic Environment Record dates it to “post medieval” which is anytime between 1540 and 1799. The bedrock at this location is…
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Park Nab
The Northern Weekly Gazette was published in Stockton-on-Tees between 1895 and 1932. Its byline was “A Home Journal Written by the People for the People“. The price in 1913 was one old penny. One of the regular sections was the “Children’s Circle — Conducted by Daddy” in which letters written by children were published. On…
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The Dunn’s Charity for the Benefit of the Poor of Kildale
In the churchyard at Kildale is an 18th-century chest tomb, which is a Listed Monument in its own right. The inscription is weathered and covered with moss and lichen so very hard to read but Cedric Anthony provides a transcript in his book ‘Glimpses of Kildale History‘: Here lyeth the body of Joseph Dunn who…