Category: Great Ayton
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A view of Roseberry from Aireyholme
At a quarter past seven on the evening of 15th June 1920, the world-famous soprano Dame Nellie Melba made history by singing across the airwaves in a live broadcast from the Marconi Company’s site in Chelmsford, Essex. Whilst she was not the first person to broadcast her voice, Dame Nellie was the first professional singer,…
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Whitbread Memorial Bridge
One for posterity, tomorrow work begins on replacement of the Whitbread Memorial Bridge. The High Street is due to be closed for 5 days while the work is carried out. The existing footbridge over the River Leven into Waterfall Park is a war memorial. It was presented in 1919 by the Under-Manager of the Ayton…
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Meadow Buttercups
Buttercup is another of those words excluded from the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. They are giving a fine display this year. Whole fields are painted yellow yet in neighbouring fields there are none. It’s almost as if they’re a crop. These are, I believe, Meadow buttercups (Ranunculus acris). These are an indicator…
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Bluebells in Cliff Rigg Wood
Another wet morning. The bluebells seem to be slow this year, although perhaps still a bit early. Cliff Rigg Wood is south facing so the flowers emerge earlier than in the north-west facing Newton Wood. These bluebells are in a gulley which is in a bowl at the south-east end of Cliff Rigg Wood known…
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The Friends School
The blossom on the stand of cherry trees in front of the old Friends’ School has survived the overnight gales. I’ve written about role of the The Friends School in assisting Jewish refugee children from Nazi controlled Europe before, In all, up to 1940, 32 children from Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary found a new…
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Blackthorn, Thief Lane
In 2012, a human headless torso was discovered during industrialised cutting of peat from a bog in in Rossan, Co. Meath. The lower half had been destroyed by the peat cutting machinery. It was dated to the Iron Age and became known as the Moydrum Man although the slenderness of the skeletal remains suggests this…
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Prehistoric Roseberry
I wrote the other day that the name Airyholme (the farm in the centre of the photograph) derives from the Old Norse ǽrgum meaning ‘at the shielings’. That’s the seventh and eighth centuries, but what of earlier times? The Romans seem to have had Cleveland under control, perhaps they felt the Brigantes, the local tribe,…
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Aireyholme Farm
They must be lambing around now at Aireyholme Farm, the 1st April being the traditional date. There are plenty of sheep in the surrounding fields. Although a single farm now, Aireyholme was recorded in the Domesday Book as the manor of Ergun. It must have a been a moderately sized settlement then and the name…
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The River Leven at Great Ayton
I’ve never seen these on the Leven before. Presumably after trout. A bit pretentious for my liking, in the middle of the village. There’s a difference of opinion as to the original of the name Leven. Both say it’s Celtic. One possibility is ‘llevn’ meaning smooth, or another is ‘Leuan‘, a water-nymph. It’s interesting that…
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Slacks Quarry
This must be one of the oldest whinstone quarries in the Ayton area. It is shown on the 1856 6″ O.S. map which predates the huge Cliff Ridge quarry but there are workings shown on Langbaugh Ridge (to the west of the Guisborough road) and at Dingledow Quarry (to the east of it). Whinstone is…