Out & About …

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

Category: Cringle Moor

  • 18th-Century Valentines

    18th-Century Valentines

    I noticed new trees have been planted on Busby Moor, that stretch of Cleveland Hills below Cringle Moor and Green Bank. And so to St. Valentine’s day, isn’t this year flying by? Francis Grose’s ‘A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue‘, written in 1785, defines a ‘valentine‘ as ‘the first woman seen by a man,…

  • A temperature inversion covered the lowlands around Stokesley this morning, inching up the steep banks of the Cleveland Hills

    A temperature inversion covered the lowlands around Stokesley this morning, inching up the steep banks of the Cleveland Hills

    The sheep munching away on the col between Cringle and Cold Moors are apathetically unaware of the creeping cloud. The distinctive red earth is a spoil heap from jet working that has been burnt to convert the soft, crumbly shale into a hard, flakey material for use in building up farm tracks. The burning seems…

  • The Four Sisters

    The Four Sisters

    I am not sure who coined the term the ‘Four Sisters’ for the Cleveland hills of  Hasty Bank, Cold Moor, Cringle Moor and Carlton Moor. Maybe it was Martyn Hudson who used that term in his book ‘on blackamoor‘. They form a familiar view from the vale of Cleveland. From urban Teesside, the flattened aspect…

  • Kirby Bank — a battleground between a David and a Goliath

    Kirby Bank — a battleground between a David and a Goliath

    In 1854 there was a legal dispute over the boundary between Bilsdale and Kirby which has been decribed as a ‘David and Goliath’ legal battle. The plaintiff (he who brought the case) was the rich and influential Lord Feversham, Lord of the Manor of Bilsdale. The defendant was James Emerson who was described in the…

  • Making a mountain out of a mole-hill

    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…

  • Cranimoor

    Cranimoor

    Just ten minutes earlier the “hog-backed sweep of Cranimoor” as Frank Elgee wrote was clear. Time to head back to the car before the weather deteriorates. I am on Cold Moor looking across the col of Little Raisdale, for want of a better name. At 432 m, Cringle Moor, to give the hill its more…

  • Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank

    Kirby Bank looking luxuriant under a coat of fresh bracken, the bane of the moors. On 14 June 1932, the Daily Mail carried a somewhat brief report: Climbed 41 Peaks in 24 Hours Mr. Robert Graham, of Keswick, Cumberland, has created a 24-hours walking and climbing record in Lakeland by scaling 41 peaks in an…

  • Once more into the clag

    Once more into the clag

    Not much to see today above the 300m contour. This is the Alec Falconer memorial seat on Cringle Moor. Alec Falconer was a founder member in 1912  of the “Middlesbrough and District Countrywide Holidays Association and Holiday Fellowship Rambling Club” which went on to become known as the Middlesbrough Rambling Club. He was also an…

  • Green Bank from Cringle End

    Green Bank from Cringle End

    Otherwise known as the Lord Stones Country Park, which should, of course, be the Lords’ Stone as there’s only one stone situated where the lands of three Lords met: Duncombe of Helmsley, Marwood of Busby Hall and Aislesby. A murky day, and windy too. On Cringle Moor holding the camera steading was not easy. No…

  • The col between Cringle Moor and Cold Moor

    The col between Cringle Moor and Cold Moor

    A morning of swirling cloud and bursts of sunshine. The mist cleared long enough to snatch this photo as I descended Cold Moor to the nameless col with Cringle Moor. Here, there is the base of the ancient Donna Cross and further down towards the low lands a stream develops called Halliday Slack but otherwise…