Category: Great Ayton
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Aireyholme: The Humble Launchpad of Empire’s Favourite Navigator
From the summit of Roseberry Topping, the Cleveland landscape performs its finest impression of timeless rural charm: undulating green fields stitched together by hedgerows, with Aireyholme Farm sitting unobtrusively in the middle like it’s been dropped there by a distracted cartographer. This was the patch of the country where the young James Cook grew up,…
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Floods, Mills and a Sunday Flush
A flood warning late last night prompted me to wander down the village this morning and along the river. The so-called “waterfall” was in full spate, though hardly dramatic enough to warrant excitement. It is not a waterfall at all, of course, but a weir built in 1840 thanks to local benefactor Thomas Richardson. Its…
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Down among the Thistles
The hedgerows are heavy with the spoils of summer. Blackberries shine darkly in the shade, crab apples blush among the leaves, and Rowan berries hang in bright clusters. Rosebay Willowherb releases its silky seeds to the wind, while the thistles too surrender their down, sending it drifting like smoke across the fields. Thistles are cursed…
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“Flobbadob-adob … Weeeeed!”
Sunflowers always remind me of Little Weed from The Flowerpot Men, a television nostalgia from my childhood. She — if that is the right word, given her ambiguous gender and equally uncertain botanical identity — played the role of quiet confidant to Bill and Ben, the babbling flowerpot duo. Like other daisies, sunflowers are composite…
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The Stone They Left Behind
A rough-cut sandstone block lies abandoned at the top of an old quarry on Ayton Bank. It first appears on the 1915 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map. One wonders what caused the sudden stop—tools downed, the block left where it was, after the time and effort it must have taken to cut it, shape it, and…
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Bombweed, a Hall Built of Basalt and German POWs
The vivid pinks of Rosebay Willowherb blaze across summer landscapes, yet most pass them by. Known as Fireweed, it is often the first plant to reclaim burnt ground. That was not always the case. The Georgians treated it as a rarity, grown in gardens rather than spotted in the wild. Even in 1853, the Reverend…
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VE Day: 80 Years On
Eighty years have passed since Victory in Europe Day, a moment etched in the collective memory by black-and-white newsreels showing ecstatic crowds flooding the streets of London and other major cities. But away from the capital, in the quieter corners of Cleveland and North Yorkshire, the mood was more restrained — though no less meaningful,…
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Of Brass Monkeys, May Blossoms and Other Perils
Growing up in Nottingham in the early 1960s, I shall never forget me mam barking “naer cast a clout till May is out” whenever I dared venture into the Spring air without full Arctic gear—duffle coat, string vest, probably a balacalva too. She assumed, and I dutifully followed, “May”meant the month, which made sense given…
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The Postgate School
Here’s one I’ve been saving up, not for a rainy day, for today has been anything but rainy, positively sweltering, but a day when being Out & About has been a touch limited. It is a photo of the hallowed “village schoolroom museum” of Great Ayton, proudly preserving the educational shrine where James Cook—local boy…
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Lesser Celandine: Poetry, Pollinators, and Piles
Lesser celandine is a welcome sight, provided one enjoys squinting at small yellow flowers. In a hailstorm, it folds itself up, retreating like a weary thing, as Wordsworth put it in The Lesser Celandine. Wordsworth is better known for his poem about daffodils, but he was apparently more enamoured with this unassuming plant, composing three…