Category: Guisborough
-
I walked past the entrance to Sleddale Farm today
There have been several noticeable changes since, in the late 1970s, just before Christmas, I would take a bottle of malt to the Sleddale farmers — two brothers by the name of Proud if I recall — in recognition of them allowing the Guisborough Moors Race to run through their farmyard. Neither of the two…
-
The natural temptation, when standing on Highcliffe Nab is to look north over Guisborough town …
… this view is south — towards Highcliffe Farm, Codhill Slack and Percy Cross Rigg. Highcliffe Farm is an exposed location, gaining no shelter from both northerly and southerly winds. In 1908, it was being farmed by Thomas Wedgewood. One day Wedgwood and a farm labourer were snaring rabbits on the hillside when he noticed…
-
“Spare the Trees”
“Two facts confront us, and deserve serious consideration. The forests of the world are going just as the coal beneath our feet is going — man is a cooking animal, and must have fuel. In all the great outlets of water floods multiply, and become more and more destructive. We are compelled to ask if…
-
A day of strange atmospherics
On this day in 2005, at 0601 in the morning, a huge explosion rocked an oil depot in Buncefield near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was the largest in peacetime Europe and the noise is said to have been heard as far away as the Netherlands. I seem to remember people at work saying they…
-
On me bike which meant I had to negotiate Guisborough’s busy town centre!
Surprisingly quiet. The town cross is relatively modern but the steps are worn, perhaps part of the Medieval Market cross although a 17th or 18th century engraving shows circular steps. Perhaps the engraving also shows the town’s bull-ring which was located very near the cross. Yes, bull-baiting was a very popular in this period and…
-
Guisborough Races, 1784: Asses, Mens’ sack race, Ladies, and a Soap-tail’d Pig
Guisborough, population around 17,000. At the turn of the 19th-century, in the 1801 census, it was a mere 1,719. This was the eve of the industrial revolution, nevertheless it was the largest town in the area, the focal point of trade, although the alum industry, once a major employer, was in decline. Another industry which…
-
On this day in 1853, the Middlesbrough & Guisborough Railway was opened with great fanfare to transport ironstone from Joseph Pease’s mines at Codhill to the smelting furnances of the nascent Teesside
The York Herald reported the event. This line was opened for mineral traffic on Friday, the 11th inst. The day being highly propitious, several hundred people assembled to do honour to the occasion. Long before the hour specified, masses of human beings might be seen wending their way to the far-famed Codhill, where the ironstone…
-
Spawood Mine Switch House
I think this is an old switch house to the Spawood Ironstone Mine — I must admit I am relying on a map produced by the last operators of the mine, Dorman, Long & Co. Limited reprinted in Simon Chapman’s booklet “Guisborough District Mines”. The mine, the drift of which was off to the right,…
-
The Vale of Guisborough
In the 2011 census, the population of Guisborough was 16,979; way back in 1851 it was 2,062. The decade that followed saw the arrival of the railway and the rapid development in the ironstone industry. Although the railway was built initially to serve the needs of the Peases’ ironstone mine at Codhill, it also would…
-
Phew, that was a hot one
Didn’t venture too far today, just an early climb up Roseberry before it became too hot. This view is north-east from the summit looking down Bousdale to Guisborough.