Out & About …

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

Category: Guisborough

  • Went for a bimble around the Belmont Ironstone Mine

    Went for a bimble around the Belmont Ironstone Mine

    To be clear this is the old mine, which operated between 1855 and 1877, and not the new one which was sited a kilometre further west and which operated in the first half of the 20th-century. I didn’t really expect to find anything. The authoritative “Catalogue of Cleveland Ironstone Mines” by Peter Tuffs doesn’t mention…

  • The day Guisborough led the nation

    The day Guisborough led the nation

    A view of Highcliff Nab across Bold Venture Gill. This boundary stone is one of a line of marking the former boundary of Guisborough and Hutton Lowcross boundary. It is inscribed ‘T.C. G. 1860’; standing for Thomas Chaloner and Guisborough. But it is his father, Robert Chaloner, I want to write about today. I have…

  • Belman Bank

    Belman Bank

    Around a decade ago, felling on Belman Bank — ‘Beautiful Mountain’ — revealed the great bowl left by Thomas Chaloner’s alum works, said to be the first in Yorkshire. The manufacture of crystals of alum, used in waterproofing hides and in medicinal products, from the alum shales in the Upper Lias beds is a complicated…

  • Mesolithic Guisborough

    Mesolithic Guisborough

    I often stand on a viewpoint and wonder what the landscape before me was like in times past. What did our ancestors, standing on this same spot see? More often, my imagination struggles to extend beyond the past century. A millennium past and it becomes hazy and obscure. Eight millennia, I can only reach in…

  • Spawood and Spa Ironstone Mines

    Spawood and Spa Ironstone Mines

    At Slapewath near Guisborough, there were two ironstone mines operating in the late 19th-century within one hundred metres of each other. To the south of Alumwork Beck (the Guisborough side) was Spawood, and to north (the Skelton side) the Spa mine. They were operated by different companies and worked different royalties, but apart from their…

  • View to Guisborough over Old Park Farm

    View to Guisborough over Old Park Farm

    I nearly copped it today. Mowed down by some mountain biker careering down a Public Footpath, the Cleveland Way no less, between Percy Rigg and Highcliff. I failed to get a photo but did take some of other cyclists on the same Public Footpath but riding more considerately. In the end, I’ve opted to post…

  • Boxing Day

    Boxing Day

    Everyone knows that Boxing Day originated from the practice of distributing the contents of the Christmas Box that had been placed in churches in the days preceding Christmas for casual offerings. The box money would be opened on Christmas Day and the contents doled out the next day, St. Stephen’s Day, by priests to the poor.…

  • Guisborough from Hanging Stone

    Guisborough from Hanging Stone

    Following yesterday’s post featuring a quotation from William Camden’s 1586 book ‘Britannia’, his guide to the British Isles, I thought I should post about what he had to say about Guisborough and the alum industry, which, in the Elizabethan times, was still a novelty. This is the first half of the paragraph following yesterday’s quotation.…

  • Pilgrimage of Grace

    Pilgrimage of Grace

    On the 19th October 1536, Henry VIII lost his patience at the rebels on the Pilgrimage of Grace. He wrote to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk: “You are to use all dexterity in getting the harness and weapons of the said rebels brought in to Lincoln or other sure places, and cause all the boats…

  • Ash Bank

    Ash Bank

    The last time I used this track up to Highcliff Nab, was several winters ago, in the dark. It was then, as I’ve always remembered it, a quagmire, enclosed by tall forestry conifers. So it was quite surprising to find the bank clear-felled revealing a surprising view of Guisborough. And removed from the perpetual shade,…