Category: Bransdale
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Bransdale Church
It was pretty dreich this morning as we crested Shaw Ridge and dropped into Bransdale. I can not remember the last time the church at the head of the dale could not be seen. It’s a lovely little church, which Pevsner says “must be c. 1800” yet according to the parish website it was built…
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A Bransdale dry stone wall – before and after
Today, there are about fifteen occupied farms and cottages scattered throughout Bransdale, making a population of around about 40. At the beginning of the 19th-century it was about 400. There were shoemakers, innkeepers, millers, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, dairymen, jetminers, as well as the expected farmers and agricultural workers. Far outnumbering the humans in the dale are…
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Cockayne
On the 15th April 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her diary: Thursday 15th. It was a threatening, misty morning— but mild We set off after dinner from Eusmere— Mrs Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious & we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the…
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Smout House Sundial, Bransdale
Back in Bransdale volunteering for the National Trust. Life is getting back to normal. You don’t often come across a sundial in the middle of a field. This is one of a pair (as far as I know) near to Smout House, the National Trust’s Estate Office. The other is close to Bransdale Mill and…
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Cammon Stone
Good views of Bransdale from the Cammon Stone. I haven’t been into the National Trust valley since lockdown. All volunteering for the Trust has stopped. The Cammon Stone is considered to be one of the oldest standing stones on the moors. Probably dating from before the end of the Bronze Age; microliths, small worked pieces…
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Wesleyan Chapel, Bransdale
In most villages and dales of the North York Moors, there will be a nonconformist chapel. Sometimes it will be a Wesleyan Methodist, sometimes a Primitive Methodist, sometimes some other dissenting religion. Often there may be two in close proximity. Nonconformity played such a major part in many communities it was often the dominant religious…
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Bransdale
A refreshing day spent in Bransdale, making repairs to some of the field boundaries. Bransdale’s walls are quite distinctive. In other uplands, dry stone walls are constructed of two skins of stonework, usually dressed and tapering inwards towards the top, with the gap filled with small pieces. Bransdale’s walls are just a single skin, huge…
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A hawthorn in Bransdale
Have you ever noticed the sudden drop in temperature and light by the shadows cast by drifting Cumulus clouds? Shadows that creep over the ground on a sunny day. The flowers of this hawthorn tree are blazing in the sun whilst across the dale, the hillside is dark and gloomy. Many hawthorns are now losing…
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Disused weir, Hodge Beck, Bransdale
I’ve wanted to visit this part of Bransdale for a while, in particular, this disused weir, just below the confluence of Hodge Beck and Shaw Beck. It was built in 1936 as part of the proposed scheme by the Hull City Council Water Board to construct “the second largest reservoir” in the country in the…
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Spout House
A 19th-century farmstead in Bransdale, typical of that found in the North York Moors. It must have replaced an earlier building for according to a 1782 survey it was tenanted out to a William Petch. “Spout” is an odd name, typically meaning a pipe through which water flows off a roof. As a farm or…