-
The Shellycoat of Leith
A few days in Leith on the outskirts of Edinburgh and a chance to look out for one of Scotland’s most elusive creatures. So elusive in fact that one long term resident of Leith had never heard of the town’s watery inhabitant. Walter Scott wrote about the Shellycoat in his 1802 book ‘Ministrelsy of the…
-
The Wishing Stone
This has been on my to-do list since the spring after reading a blog post on the Arcanum web-site. It’s a large, deep, circular basin on a boulder on Ingleby Moor that is speculated to have be manmade and used for ritual purposes: the making of wishes or prayers, or curses and so on. As…
-
Making a mountain out of a mole-hill
Cringle End, overlooking the tiny village of Kirkby. Or should that be Kirby? The name suggests some antiquity, ‘the farm by the church’, from the Old Scandinavian word for church kirkja, but the structure of the modern church is pretty much Georgian. That an earlier church did exist is without doubt. It was given by…
-
Ingleby Stone Quarry Company
A wander from Bank foot on a bright sunny morning with clear views of the Cleveland Hills. This is from abandoned sandstone quarry on Greenhow, a quarry operated by the Ingleby Stone Quarry Company, the stone from which was lowered down to the Rosedale Railway by an incline known as Wren’s Incline. The flat basin…
-
Bullfinch sky
A dash up to Gribdale to catch the sunset. At first a disappointment but then the distant clouds caught fire. This was twenty minutes or so after the actual sunset, well into twilight; the display lasted barely five minutes before fading. According to the writer Robert Macfarlane, the Finnish call this orange afterglow of twilight…
-
Percy Cross Rigg
These posts often result from a faint memory which I then spend an hour or so trying to verify or research further in the evening — it beats watching ‘Strictly …’. But then, every so often, I plunge head first down a rabbit hole after I’ve pressed the post button. Yesterday was a case in…
-
Leven gorge, Kildale
A rather dull and murky walk home from Kildale. The estate have been opening up the gorge, yet further restricting access to the river and waterfall. Today, 19th October, 1536 is the day Henry VIII got tough on those who took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. In a letter to the Duke of Suffolk,…
-
Lychgates
Many churches have lychgates. A roofed, mostly open-sided gatehouse into the churchyard. Traditionally, it marked the division between consecrated and unconsecrated ground, where the priest would meet the funeral possession, say prayers over the body, and then lead the way into the church. ‘Lych‘ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for a corpse. If the…
-
Sandsend and The Maharajah of Mulgrave Castle
In the decade following the death of Maharajah Ranjit Singh in 1839, the Punjab was thrown into turmoil with several successions to the throne and a threat of annexation by the British East India Company. In 1843, Duleep Singh, just five years old, was crowned King of the Punjab and head of the Sikh nation.…
-
Scarth Nick
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Scottish drovers breasted this cleft in the Cleveland Hills driving their cattle to southern markets along the Hambleton Drove Road after fording the Tees at Yarm. It has probably used in prehistory, by the Romans and in medieval times. Today’s tarmac road winds up the climb from Swainby taking…
Care to comment?