Category: Great Ayton
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Well Cottage, Park Square
An early ride out and a surprise to see Great Ayton empty of cars. Well, almost but an opportunity not to be missed. This is Park Square and was, before the time of a piped supply, the site of one of the village water pumps, known as the Old Grey Well. Villagers would come here…
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I wandered lonely as a cloud …
… That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden dandelions; Apologies to William Wordsworth and I must admit the rhyming doesn’t work but to me, the profusion of dandelions on roadside verges at this time of the year is just as good as…
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Great Ayton from Cliff Rigg
An early wander with the dog up Cliff Rigg. Fog creeping up from the Tees Valley, its duvet not quite reaching the village. In an hour’s time, there’ll be sufficient heat in the sun for it to dissipate. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Wood Field, Great Ayton
In the early 17th-century, agriculture in Great Ayton followed the ancient open-field system where the cultivated land of the parish was divided into many long narrow furlongs and sub-divided again into strips. This was all manorial land and those villagers who were tenants or serfs farmed several dozen of these unfenced strips scattered throughout the…
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Mallard ducklings, Low Green
Winter returned this morning with a smattering over wet snow on the North York Moors, but new life on the River Leven in the village. The first brood of the year, Mallard ducklings I guess, must have been seven or eight of them, independent, parents nowhere to be seen. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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A mossy bagel
Woke up this morning to wind and solid rain with no reprieve forecasted. Inspiration found me in a tweet by Robert Macfarlane. A piece of music by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg is titled “Skovstilhed”. It’s his Opus 71 no. 4 and is translated as woodland peace. Macfarlane describes it as the calmness of spirit…
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Aireyholme Farm
Best known as where James Cook lived as a boy and where his father was employed as the farm foreman, although it is likely that the Cook family’s actual cottage was sited a little distance out of shot to the left at the foot of Cliff Rigg. The modern farm buildings in the photo date…
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Dances with sheep
A flock of Aireyholme sheep complete a short set piece of contemporary dance. Very niche. A carefully choreographed outdoor performance that is a joyful exercise in shape, rhythm and sound. But back to reality, another cracking day. Should we be worried? On this day last year, we woke up to a good snowfall with a…
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Excavation of James Cook Senior’s Cottage
An archaeological dig is currently underway in Great Ayton. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, the cottage of James Cook, the father of the famous explorer, Captain James Cook, was sold in 1934, dismantled stone by stone and shipped to Australia where it was re-erected in the Fitzroy Gardens in…
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Roseberry Ironstone Mine
It would have been bleak for the folk of Great Ayton on this day in 1921 when the 220 workers at the Roseberry Ironstone Mine received notice to cease work, at the end of which the mine would be idle. It would have been the talk of the village. The mine had reopened in 1906…