Category: Bransdale
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Bransdale — a dire forecast but it turned out alright
With flashes of sunshine from the blue-bores sweeping down the dale. Back at Barkers Plantation in Bransdale, the National Trust property in the heart of the North York Moors. But approaching the woodland from a different direction so a view I’ve never seen before. The house at the bottom of the photo is named Wind…
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Tis the season for burning
The annual burning of the heather moorland has begun — to the left of the house on the hill, up Badger Gill. Several of the tell-tale plumes could be seen on the way over into Bransdale. The house is Smout House, a mid-19th century farmstead, although until the 1952 edition of the O.S. map, the…
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Bransdale — again
Second visit this week. Appropiate this day because on 12 January, 1895, the National Trust was incorporated by three Victorian philanthropists — Miss Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley. Bransdale is of course a National Trust property, predominately comprising the dale farms, which was transferred to the Trust through the National Land…
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I have been in Bransdale many times mostly volunteering with the National Trust …
… but those visits have been very localised, coming and going in the back of a pick-up. Today I had the opportunity for a walk around the dale accompanied by a resident and seeing views and places I’ve never before noticed. Plus the weather was kind to us. The featured photo is a view west…
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A day spent with the National Trust in Barker Plantation in Bransdale
The 36 acre plantation is largely coniferous, planted as a commercial crop more than likely before the property was given to the Trust by Charles Ingram Courtney, Earl of Halifax and others, in 1975. With contractors due to come in in a year or two to fell the larch and spruce only, mature oaks, Scots…
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Bransdale
Only the ice covered road in the foreground is a give away for the temperature. A brisk day in Bransdale, blue skies and brilliant sunshine. In spite of snow falling overnight on the coastal North York Moors, not a flake had fallen on Blakey Ridge for the drive over. But with snow forecasted in the…
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Two-stoop yate
‘Gate’, as in Westgate and Belmangate of Guisborough, is an old Scandinavian word meaning a ‘way’ or ‘road’. This is etymologically different to the modern useage of the word, which stems from the Old English word ‘geat‘ for a “door, opening, passage, or hinged framework barrier”. In Yorkshire though, we say ‘yate’, ‘yat’ or ‘yet’.…
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The unmistakable silhouette of Scots Pine …
… ‘haloed‘ by the National Trust to give a breathing space and a chance to harden up before the remaining larch plantation is felled next winter. These trees are on a ridge called, quite coincidentally I think Scot Ridge, in Bransdale in the heart of the North York Moors. Barker Plantation is shown on the…
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Volunteering with the National Trust in Bransdale
Barker Plantation is a reasonably sized larch plantation covering Scot Ridge, the hill between Hodge Beck and Shaw Beck. The plantation is due to be felled, and to do this, a contractor will be brought in, but the amongst the conifers there are many birch, oaks and Scots Pine which the Trust want to retain…
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John Scarth, a “well-to-do” Bransdale farmer
A lovely view of St Nicholas Church appearing through a window in the autumnal canopy from a field near to Bransdale Mill where the National Trust are creating a wildflower meadow. The little church at Cockayne was built about 1800, so it would have been very familiar to John Scarth, a well-to-do farmer who was…