Author: Fhithich
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Aske Hall: Elegance with a Shadow
I am not often drawn to country estates, where the visitor is welcome only if he keeps to the designated path and obeys the “do not step on the grass” signs. Yet Aske Hall is a striking exception. This Georgian house, framed by parkland complete with lake and shaped by Capability Brown, wears its history…
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Purple Heather, Brown Truth
The ling, or common heather, has reached its peak bloom just days before the start of the grouse shooting season — the annual spectacle in which profit and sport take precedence over the land itself. This year, the display is patchy. Whole swathes have turned a brittle reddish-brown, appearing dead but showing faint signs of…
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Gower Dale: Where a Railway Never Came
This is Gower Dale in the Hambleton Hills. On the far left stands the ruined shell of Gowerdale House. Rising in the centre distance is Hawnby Hill. A tranquil landscape, untouched by the grime and noise of industry. It could have been very different, had Victorian ambition not faltered. On Thursday, 19 May 1853, amid…
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Bridestones Moor: The Burden of an Ancient Earthwork
A return to Bridestones Moor for the annual task of clearing the Scheduled Ancient Monument — the prehistoric dyke — of bracken and self-seeded saplings. Without this, roots and undergrowth would soon begin to damage what little remains of it. The dyke, a double bank and ditch nearly a kilometre long, is thought to date…
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Red Tarn: A Bowl Carved by Ice
This is Red Tarn, tucked into the hollow beneath Helvellyn that looks like an armchair carved into the mountainside. The shape is no accident. It is the work of glaciers. The steep headwall of Helvellyn and the sharp ridges of Striding and Swirral Edges are the giveaway. Together they form a semi-circle. Geologists call this…
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Kentmere: The Tarn That Industry Remade
I looked at the map and wondered where the real Kentmere was, the “mere,” or water, of the River Kent. There is the reservoir, high in the dale, and there is Kentmere Tarn, a long, tranquil pool screened by trees, looking for all the world like untouched nature. In truth, nature had its turn ten…
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The Bottomless, Town-Swallowing, Goose-Plucking Lake Gormire
Yorkshire is a county of myths, one of which insists it possesses only a single lake — Gormire. This is clearly absurd, yet it may simply be Yorkshire’s way of keeping a straight face while mocking outsiders, or perhaps a petty attempt to match the Lake District, which, as every schoolboy is told, also has…
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Along the Old Hambleton Drove Road
Looking south along the old Hambleton Street drove road, the route from Yarm to York that stretches across the landscape. I have just cycled north along this track, though three hundred years ago I would have been met by an entirely different scene. Then, before the coming of the railways, the way would have been…
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Clearing the Past: The Lost Drumhouse of Newton Wood
A morning with the National Trust, cutting back the summer growth from around the brick and stone remains known as the Kip, at the Cliff Rigg end of Newton Wood. The Kip is the remains of the head of a narrow-gauge tramway incline. Ore from Roseberry Ironstone Mine once hurtled down here under its own…
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On this Day in 1974 — When Health & Safety Went Mad
Just over fifty years ago, in 1974, I was into my first year of full-time work. Newly settled in North Yorkshire, it may have been then that I first looked down the short, wide dale of Greenhowe, maybe from this very spot, perhaps at this very season, when the ling is beginning to flare into…