Tag: history
-
Rosedale & Lastingham Light Railway
In 1896, the Light Railways Act 1896 was enacted which allowed new ‘light railways’ to be expediently built, principally in rural areas. A light railway was “one constructed with lighter rails and structures, running at a slower speed, with poorer accommodation for passengers and less facility for freight”, and working “with less stringent standards of…
-
Commondale Bleach Mill
Another item on my bucket list ticked off. Commondale Beck is barely two miles long from its start at the meeting of Sleddale and Ravengill Becks to its confluence with the River Esk, although its meanderings might push it over this distance. About 175 metres from Commondale Railway Station on the west Guisborough parish side…
-
Newton-under-Roseberry
Otherwise known as Newton-in-Cleveland. The base camp for any ascent of Roseberry Topping. The renown local historian John Walker Ord, writing in 1846, described Newton as “a small, dirty, insignificant village, consisting of a few small huts, without any pretensions to beauty or order whatever”. Twelve years later, Walter White (an early tourist from Berkshire)…
-
“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!”
Ah, warm sunshine and lambs gambolling in the fields. A sure sign that Spring is here. Everyone knows the nursery rhyme. Once said to have been a proletarian cry in the Middle Ages because the tremendous demand for wool meant that farming land had been turned into pasture for sheep. Thousands of farmhands were thrown…
-
Side-tracked by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
I am slowly getting around every boundary stone on these northern moors. This one is inscribed “RY 1752”, identical to the stone 600m or so to the south west. Ralph Yoward must have had a bulk buy. 1752 — George II was on the throne; the 11 days between 3rd and 13th September inclusive were…
-
Joan Hutton-Wilson Memorial
I’ve come across this memorial before, in a bracken infested copse just off the steep Trenet Bank out of Bilsdale. I was almost surprised to find it: 1968 Joan Hutton-Wilson who loved Bilsdale Not that I thought it would have disappeared. The main photo is the view from the memorial. Chop Gate is centre, the…
-
Gisborough Priory
Called in at Gisborough Priory to look at the ruins that are dominated by the iconic east window. It took a while to frame this view, the grounds were swarming with students from the sixth-form college. It was good to see so many young people relaxing and enjoying their surroundings. But I wonder if those…
-
Cliff Rigg and Great Ayton from Roseberry
We are informed from Great Ayton near Gisborough, in Yorkshire; that a mad Cat has lately bit two Women, a Horse, and also several other Creatures at some Miles Distance from the Place it belonged to. As it is found by Experience, this Malady (which is much more terrible in the Human Species than Death…
-
High Street’s Roman Road
Or is it? The first reference to a Roman Road over the 828m high fell High Street appeared in a book published in 1814 by John Britton and Edward Wedlake Brayley: ‘The Beauties of England and Wales, Or, Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive, of Each County‘. In spite of some Victorian excavations, when nothing conclusive…
-
Sandwick from Gowbarrow
A view across Ullswater from the mighty heights of Gowbarrow fell. On the opposite shore, Sandwick lies at the junction of Martindale and Boredale separated by the ridge of Beda Fell. Patches of snow on Rampsgill Head. Martindale once boasted a public house, the Star Inn, now a farm called Cotehow. Dorothy Wordsworth recalls dining…