Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Month: February 2022

  • Oak sapling in Newton Wood

    Oak sapling in Newton Wood

    Or should I say a ‘yack‘ sapling, yack being an 18th-century Yorkshire term for the oak. We also have ‘yackrams‘ for acorns. This is really a follow-on from yesterday’s post about the planting of woodland on bracken covered slopes unsuitable for general agriculture. Newton Wood is a predominately oak woodland but with ash, lime, sycamore,…

  • Green Bank

    Green Bank

    I’ve entitled this ‘Green Bank’. That’s the name of the slight rise that can be made out on the col between Cringle Moor and Carlton Bank. Just to the left of Roseberry in the distant. The col is now lorded over by the misnamed Lord Stones Cafe. The foreground is heavily dominated by the skeletal…

  • Roseberry from the Folly field

    Roseberry from the Folly field

    It was announced last week that the Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison MP, plans to set up an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) to “apply parliamentary scrutiny to the operational and strategic direction of the National Trust”. This seems to be specifically in response to the Trust’s recent report examining the links with its properties and…

  • Blue Lagoon

    Blue Lagoon

    It definitely had a blue tinge about it, a result of the mineral washing out of the alum shales. Blue Lagoon or Blue lake is a late-19th-century reservoir built to provide a head of water to hydraulic hoist and water turbines at Home Farm. It was built by Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, the industrialist and…

  • Warren Moor Ironstone Mine

    Warren Moor Ironstone Mine

    The unusual yet familiar chimney that dominates the site of the failed Warren Moor Mine, a short lived enterprise that hoped to capitalise on the 1860s ironstone boom. The architecture of the chimney is in contrast to the utilitarian style later in the century. No expense seemed to have been spared, with decorative polychromatic banding,…

  • Those were the days …

    Those were the days …

    … standing in the queue waiting for the telephone to become free, and then, when your turn did come around, putting in 2p and shouting “phone me back” as soon as it is answered. I have two pet hates in photographs. One is sloping horizons, and two is getting my shadow in. I failed on…

  • Pinchinthorpe

    Pinchinthorpe

    The Domesday Book records two manors in Pinchinthorpe.  The eastern half, centred on the modern Pinchinthorpe House (but not as far as the Pinchinthorpe Vistor Centre) and the western half comprising Pinchinthorpe Hall. The photo shows almost the full extent of the western half. Bottom left, partially hidden by trees is Pinchinthorpe Hall. The farm…

  • Roseberry Mary Staveley

    Roseberry Mary Staveley

    On Sunday, I posted about Thomas Kitchingman Staveley, who owned the north side of Roseberry Topping and the Common in the mid-19th-century. I ended it by saying he had a son and two daughters. The eldest of the daughters was delightfully named Roseberry Mary Staveley who eventually inherited the whole estate including Newton manor. Although…