Out & About …

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

Tag: legend

  • The Green, St. John’s in the Vale

    The Green, St. John’s in the Vale

    Mondays have always brought on a state of dysphoria after the euphoria of a weekend away. I think another post of St. John’s in the Vale is justified — a day late but heigh ho. The photo is taken looking south from Lad Knott overlooking the hamlet of ‘The Green‘, which, legend has it, was…

  • Roseberry Well

    Roseberry Well

    I moved up to the Cleveland area in the Autumn of 1973 and I’ve been climbing Roseberry on a regular basis every since. It’s my patch. And I thought I knew every nook and cranny. I knew about Roseberry Well, where the young Prince Oswy is said to have drowned having been taken to the…

  • Whorl Hill, the lair of the Worm of Sexhow

    Whorl Hill, the lair of the Worm of Sexhow

    Autumnal sunshine, long shadows and a morning chill. A slight navigational error opened up this fine view of Whorl Hill, where there be dragons. Or rather one dragon, the worm of Sexhow. Thomas Parkinson wrote about it in his “Yorkshire legends and traditions” of 1888, but it was John Fairfax Blakeborough who suggested Whorl Hill…

  • Whitestone Cliff and Gormire Lake

    Whitestone Cliff and Gormire Lake

    Looking down onto Lake Gormire near Sutton Bank. A place of myth and legend. In the distance is the elongated Jurassic outlier, Hood Hill with where Druids were said to have made sacrifices. Some say Lake Gormire was made when an earthquake swallowed up a whole town. The roofs of the houses and chimneys can…

  • The Sad Tale of Sarkless Kitty

    The Sad Tale of Sarkless Kitty

    April, 1784 and Kitty Garthwaite, a domestic servant girl from Gillamoor, was meeting her lover, Herbert Longster at Lowna in Farndale, close to the farm where she was employed and which was Herbert’s father’s farm. It seems Kitty was pregnant and previously, when first told, Herbert had refused to accept responsibility. Herbert’s father wasn’t too happy also and had told Kitty to leave. Herbert must…