Category: North York Moors
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Sexism in the office in the 20th century
After the Susan Everard murder and subsequent vigil on Clapham Common, I realised I had never really given that much thought to women’s experience both of sexism, but in particular, their vulnerability to men’s violence. I was brought up in the 50s/60s and fortunately had little experience of outright misogyny. I do remember the teenage…
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Orange peel
“It is a sober commentary on the British way of life that the National Trust has to spend £250 a year picking up litter on its properties in the Lake District. People presumably visit these places to drink in the especial beauty of the scene, but apparently they leave them more or less covered in…
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The Badger Stones
A vernal fresh feel to the moors today with celestine skies. An overnight frost but the day is warming nicely. The Badger Stones are a collection of huge sandstone boulders in the upper catchment of Hodge Beck in Bransdale. A highly visible landmark surrounded by a sea of heather moorland. They must always have had…
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Potters Ridge
I have not taken a photo from this spot before. Honest. I moved a hundred metres south from Black Nab to be sure. I have often wondered how Potters Ridge got its name. That low 25 metre high prominence behind Highcliff Nab. I think I’ve found out. In 1806, Robert Chaloner, the Lord of the…
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The Boulder
“I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder.” So said Donkey to Shrek. The climbing fraternity have dubbed this huge boulder below Ward Nab on Coate Moor as simply “The Boulder”. I feel sure it must at some time have had another name but it looks like that has been lost to history. A…
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Resurfaced laid path to Roseberry
A brand spanking new path. The National Park has been hard at work upgrading the path between Aireyholme Cottage and Roseberry. Over the winter it had become impassable with a gluppy mud. The farmer had, a few years ago, with good intentions, enclosed the path to the statutory 1½ metre width for a field edge.…
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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…
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Mount Grace Priory
Most photos of Mount Grace Priory feature the late medieval Carthusian charterhouse. The ruined church is an iconic image. 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…
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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 ‘evils’ 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…
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On this day in 1933
“It was icy cold in Munich on New Year’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 Vorwärts headlined ‘Hitler’s Rise and Fall’ suggested the…