Category: North York Moors
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The Forgotten Lichenologist of Great Ayton: William Mudd
Watching over this popular approach to Easby Moor stand a pair of weathered gateposts, their stone faces mottled with centuries of lichen. They guard the path with the weary dignity of old sentinels, and one cannot help but wonder: did they stand here before Captain Cook’s Monument was raised on the hill beyond? The answer,…
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Shale, Sandstone and a Coffee Cup
I set out this morning hoping to capture a clear view of the mound on Roseberry’s western slope, formed by the landslip of May 1912. The result was underwhelming; the photograph failed to do justice to the defining shape of the old slump. During the second week of that May, a great section of Roseberry’s…
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Urra: What’s in a Name?
Urra. A name that sounds as if the wind itself whispered it across the moor. Once, according to Richard Blakeborough, this lonely hamlet in upper Bilsdale had a blacksmith and an inn – the twin hearts of any small community. Now it is little more than a name on a map, clinging to the edge…
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The Watchers of the Plain: Highcliff Nab in the Stone Age Landscape
From Gisborough Moor, Highcliff Nab rises starkly above the Cleveland Plain, and it is easy to imagine the lives of its earliest visitors, the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who roamed here during six millennia before 4000 BC — 900 years before Stonehenge was even thought about. Highcliff Nab is recognised as a key site of Early Mesolithic…
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The View from the Hanging Stone
About a mile north of Over Silton, on the steep flank of Thimbleby Banks, stands a curious mass of stone known as the Hanging Stone. It is a great angular block of coarse grit, so boldly poised that it seems to hover in mid-air. Were it not hidden by the thick wood below, one might…
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Daylight Saving: An Experiment in Collective Jet Lag
Every autumn, we perform our favorite ritual of self-sabotage: we change the clocks and then act surprised when our bodies protest. The great “extra hour of sleep” myth returns, while our circadian systems quietly implode. And tonight’s the night, as the clocks are about to jump back, our bodies will begin their hormonal bedtime symphony.…
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Hobthrush Hall
High above the village of Over Silton, recent felling has exposed cliffs that rear up like the broken ramparts of some forgotten fortress, appropriately named The Scarrs. Here lies a cleft in the rock known as Hobthrush Hall. The locals call it a cave, though it feels more like the scar of something ancient and…
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Electricity and Etymology at Bonfield Ghyll
An Archimedes Screw, housed in a green and white casing, tames the restless waters of Bonfield Gill. The view looks upstream, where the beck threads through a small patch of woodland dominated by birch. Autumn has arrived with its full painter’s palette: russet bracken, lush green grasses, and a mossy tree stump that seems to…
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Folklore, Foxes and the Turf: The Life of John Fairfax-Blakeborough
Another view of Low House in Westerdale, this time from the south-east. As mentioned yesterday, this was once the home of John Fairfax-Blakeborough, folklorist, writer, and stalwart of old Cleveland. Major John Fairfax-Blakeborough (1883–1976) first saw the light of day in Guisborough on 16 January 1883. Known as Jack, he was the son of Richard…
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Barwykerowe: The Forgotten Hamlet beneath Castleton Rigg
Castleton Rigg is one of those places everyone knows from the car window yet almost no one bothers to walk upon. I can remember only two previous visits, one before and one after the arrival of that monstrous vanity project masquerading as public art (here and here). Today’s visit offered then the chance to look…