Category: Great Ayton
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Capt. Cook’s Monument and Aireyholme Farm
The familiar sight of Capt. Cook’s Monument on Easby Moor appearing as the low cloud dissipates. It wouldn’t have been familiar to the young James Cook who lived as a young boy at Aireyholme Farm (centre of photograph). His father was employed there as a hind or skilled farm hand. However problematic Cook is in the…
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Inclosure Act 1845
On this day in 1845, the Conservative government of Robert Peel oversaw the passing of the Inclosure Act 1845, the first of a string of Acts finally taking away public land, and appointing enclosure commissioners who could enclose more land without submitting a request to Parliament. It was the zenith of a process of enclosure…
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Freedom Day
Another ‘dog day’, so named because these hot and sultry days of summer (in the northern hemisphere at least) are associated with the Dog Star Sirius rising with the sun. And ‘Freedom Day’ to boot. ‘Freedom’ to all those key workers, NHS staff and care helpers who cannot avoid the risk of prolonged exposure, to…
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Ayton Banks – former Water Supply
I have been saving this up for a rainy day; and it was a bit damp this morning. I understand it was part of the water supply for the Cleveland Lodge Estate, home of the Fry family and was one of at least five springs around the edge of the moors from which water was…
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A view of Roseberry from Aireyholme
At a quarter past seven on the evening of 15th June 1920, the world-famous soprano Dame Nellie Melba made history by singing across the airwaves in a live broadcast from the Marconi Company’s site in Chelmsford, Essex. Whilst she was not the first person to broadcast her voice, Dame Nellie was the first professional singer,…
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Whitbread Memorial Bridge
One for posterity, tomorrow work begins on replacement of the Whitbread Memorial Bridge. The High Street is due to be closed for 5 days while the work is carried out. The existing footbridge over the River Leven into Waterfall Park is a war memorial. It was presented in 1919 by the Under-Manager of the Ayton…
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Meadow Buttercups
Buttercup is another of those words excluded from the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. They are giving a fine display this year. Whole fields are painted yellow yet in neighbouring fields there are none. It’s almost as if they’re a crop. These are, I believe, Meadow buttercups (Ranunculus acris). These are an indicator…
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Bluebells in Cliff Rigg Wood
Another wet morning. The bluebells seem to be slow this year, although perhaps still a bit early. Cliff Rigg Wood is south facing so the flowers emerge earlier than in the north-west facing Newton Wood. These bluebells are in a gulley which is in a bowl at the south-east end of Cliff Rigg Wood known…
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The Friends School
The blossom on the stand of cherry trees in front of the old Friends’ School has survived the overnight gales. I’ve written about role of the The Friends School in assisting Jewish refugee children from Nazi controlled Europe before, In all, up to 1940, 32 children from Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary found a new…
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Blackthorn, Thief Lane
In 2012, a human headless torso was discovered during industrialised cutting of peat from a bog in in Rossan, Co. Meath. The lower half had been destroyed by the peat cutting machinery. It was dated to the Iron Age and became known as the Moydrum Man although the slenderness of the skeletal remains suggests this…