Out & About …

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

Category: Bransdale

  • Bransdale – Eastside

    Bransdale – Eastside

    Bransdale is a idyllic community of scattered farmsteads. It seems to have always been the case. Eastside and Westside were once two separate townships belonging to two separate parishes before they were merge into Bransdale-cum-Farndale in 1873. You would have thought that crime would have been a rare occurrence in this remote dale, but in…

  • Stork House

    Stork House

    It’s 2½ years since I was last at Stork House in perhaps the remotest part of Bransdale and decay has continued to creep on. Such neglect seems a real shame but the cost of renovation would be prohibitive, and of course, being a National Trust property, it can not be sold, a condition of its…

  • Bransdale Mill

    Bransdale Mill

    Volunteering with the National Trust in Bransdale, planting 350 wildflower ‘plugs’. I must qualify that: I didn’t do all that number alone, it was a collective effort. But an opportunity to post another photo of the mill, from the rear, the north aspect clearly showing the water race funnel into the building where the water…

  • The Old Schoolroom, Bransdale

    The Old Schoolroom, Bransdale

    The former schoolhouse, now used as a community centre for the families of this isolated dale. In 1874, an old schoolmaster of Bransdale met an unfortunate end which caused an outrage in the dale, indeed it was headlined in the regional press as: THE OUTRAGE UPON AN OLD SCHOOL-MASTER AT BRANSDALE. The old schoolmaster was…

  • Bransdale Church

    Bransdale Church

    It was pretty dreich this morning as we  crested Shaw Ridge and dropped into Bransdale. I can not remember the last time the church at the head of the dale could not be seen. It’s a lovely little church, which Pevsner says “must be c. 1800” yet according to the parish website it was built…

  • A Bransdale dry stone wall – before and after

    A Bransdale dry stone wall – before and after

    Today, there are about fifteen occupied farms and cottages scattered throughout Bransdale, making a population of around about 40. At the beginning of the 19th-century it was about 400. There were shoemakers, innkeepers, millers, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, dairymen, jetminers, as well as the expected farmers and agricultural workers. Far outnumbering the humans in the dale are…

  • Cockayne

    Cockayne

    On the 15th April 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her diary: Thursday 15th. It was a threatening, misty morning— but mild We set off after dinner from Eusmere— Mrs Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious & we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the…

  • Smout House Sundial, Bransdale

    Smout House Sundial, Bransdale

    Back in Bransdale volunteering for the National Trust. Life is getting back to normal. You don’t often come across a sundial in the middle of a field. This is one of a pair (as far as I know) near to Smout House, the National Trust’s Estate Office. The other is close to Bransdale Mill and…

  • Cammon Stone

    Cammon Stone

    Good views of Bransdale from the Cammon Stone. I haven’t been into the National Trust valley since lockdown. All volunteering for the Trust has stopped. The Cammon Stone is considered to be one of the oldest standing stones on the moors. Probably dating from before the end of the Bronze Age; microliths, small worked pieces…

  • Wesleyan Chapel, Bransdale

    Wesleyan Chapel, Bransdale

    In most villages and dales of the North York Moors, there will be a nonconformist chapel. Sometimes it will be a Wesleyan Methodist, sometimes a Primitive Methodist, sometimes some other dissenting religion. Often there may be two in close proximity. Nonconformity played such a major part in many communities it was often the dominant religious…