Out & About …

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

Category: North York Moors

  • Cook, Cats, Saints and Thieves

    Cook, Cats, Saints and Thieves

    Capt. Cook’s Monument, dedicated of course to Captain James Cook, that problematic “discoverer” of Australia, who lived as a boy in the village of Great Ayton. When he set out on the first of his three voyages to the south Pacific, his ship was the HMS Bark Endeavour, a Whitby built collier. She was a…

  • Mount Grace Priory

    Mount Grace Priory

    Most photos of Mount Grace Priory feature the late medieval Carthusian charterhouse.Ā  The ruined church is an iconic image.Ā The house is often overlooked. The former guest house of the monastery was converted into a private house in 1654 probably by Lord Darcy and substantially renovated and extended by Sir Issac Lowthian Bell about 1900. The…

  • A Sad and Shameful Case

    A Sad and Shameful Case

    A few posts ago I started to slip down a philosophical rabbit hole. Is the “right of property” one of the fundamental ā€˜evilsā€™ in human society? Did we evolve to own property? I’ve kept thinking. Are there other constructs that may have been with us since we were hunting and gathering? Two come to mind…

  • On this day in 1933

    On this day in 1933

    ā€œIt was icy cold in Munich on New Yearā€™s Day [1933]. Adolf Hitler was drinking coffee over breakfast at his luxurious apartment at 16 Prinzregentenplatz. The morning papers made gloomy reading about his political prospects in the coming year. A critical article in the social democratic newspaper VorwƤrts headlined ā€˜Hitlerā€™s Rise and Fallā€™ suggested the…

  • Dear Rishi Sunak,

    Dear Rishi Sunak,

    I am writing this open letter, as one of your constituents, to express my concern at some of the aspects of the introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021 which I believe has been deliberatively drafted as an excessively lengthy document (307 pages) and which is being rushed through the Commons on…

  • Hooton

    Hooton

    One of my regular runs during this latest lockdown has been from Pinchinthorpe Walkway back home to Great Ayton, so I have become fascinated by the ancient township of Hooton, or to use its modern name, Hutton.Ā  So much so that the spline of the much thumbed book I have, “Two Ancient Townships – Studies…

  • Here be a dragon

    Here be a dragon

    ā€œFirst Swainby meets the eye, next Whorlton near, Its ancient castle mouldering in a heap : A little distant stands a mount rotund, The form of Roseberry, but lower much: Upon its summit swords and divers arms Were found, dug up, supposed a battery there To batter down the castle built below.ā€ PIERSON’S Roseberry. Whorl…

  • Cringle Crag

    Cringle Crag

    Last night I found a book I had forgotten I had, tucked behind the book shelves. Tom Burns Scott has written extensively about the North York Moors. In this book, he wrote of an engraving in an old quarry face on Cringle Moor that records “a change of ownership of the Dromonby estate in 1732”.…

  • The Right to Roam

    The Right to Roam

    I’ve had my knuckles rapped. I recently received this email Hello, It’s been brought to my attention by a friend that you are publicising The Buckingham Stone and encouraging people to visit it and giving them a Geographic location for it. Are you aware that the Buckingham Stone is on private land and not on…

  • Devil’s Matchsticks

    Devil’s Matchsticks

    One of the lesser known residents of Great Ayton was William Mudd (1829ā€“1879) who the head gardener for Thomas Richardson, a retired banker and one of the village’s most influential and generous benefactors. Mudd came under the influence of George Dixon, a fellow Quaker and superintendent of the North of England Agricultural School, the predecessor…