Category: North York Moors
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On this Day in 1936, the Iconic Trig Pillar was Born
On 18 April 1936, a small band of surveyors gathered around a concrete pillar in a field in Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire, to begin the retriangulation of Great Britain. The previous effort, from the early 1800s, had apparently become too out-dated to be useful. Thus began the era of the trig pillar: those four-foot concrete obelisks…
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A Bransdale Stang Stoop That Time has Forgot
Up on Gimmer Bank in Bransdale today, just above Bloworth Slack before it merges with Badger Gill to become Hodge Beck, I noticed this old piece of farming history: a ‘stang stoop’, or ‘heave’, or ‘slip gate’—back from when labour was cheap and farmers made do with local resources instead of buying five-bar gates from…
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The Pannierman Way
A pair of ancient standing stones flank a stretch of weather-worn path known as the Kirby Bank Trod. This marvel of medieval civil engineering forms part of a so-called “Long Trod” — a term employed because it would have required “considerable resource and supra-parochial organisation” to build such an “economic venture of some significance.” The…
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When the Fool Returns from Africa: Musings on Cuckoo Day
I was spared the indignity of rummaging through an empty pocket for loose change on my Monday climb up Roseberry Topping, which is just as well, since I heard no cuckoo. According to local superstition, today—April 14th—is “Cuckoo Day,” the date when this allegedly symbolic bird is supposed to announce its return with its distinctive…
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The Shah of Thorgill and His £26 Rebellion
This is Thorgill: a tributary of the River Seven, the main drainage for Rosedale. While technically a watercourse, it is perhaps better known as a hamlet, once even managing to sustain a Methodist Chapel. Thorgill briefly staggered into the national spotlight in the 1950s, not through any great achievement, but thanks to the antics of…
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Commondale Moor Revisited — a Tumulus
I thought I might as well head over to Wayworth Moor to cast a jaded eye over the so-called stone circle. I have been there more times than I remember, and—shockingly—it still has not transformed into a majestic North York Moors Stonehenge. Given its steadfast refusal to evolve in the past three millennia, I cannot…
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Furze: Fodder, Folklore, and the Smell of Coconut
A sudden change in the weather, as if the sky has grown bored. No more sun-drenched optimism; just a grey sheet of disinterest overhead. Still, Roseberry manages to look charming, despite being surpassed by the only plant capable of making scrubland smell like a tropical cocktail — gorse. Its yellow blooms, reeking of coconut and…
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Wheeldale Lodge: From Shooting to Youth Hostel to Private Residence
My memories of Wheeldale Lodge are, regrettably, a jumble. One of the earliest involves the unremarkable joy of dunking sore feet in Wheeldale Beck after a needlessly long march across the Lyke Wake Walk. This was in 1969, and my 17-year-old self had been trudging for twelve and a half hours. The route comes down…
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Bransdale’s Dry-Stone Walls: Standing Strong, Sometimes
Dry-stone walls are everywhere on the North York Moors and in other rocky parts of Britain, mostly because they are built to last and farmers found plenty of stones lying around. The concept is hardly original; versions of these walls have existed since Neolithic times, and from Europe to Africa. The idea is simple: pile…
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The Ancient Hollow-Way to Nowhere in Particular
The Public Bridleway from the hamlet of Urra winds its way up to another Right of Way that follows Billy’s Dyke, that Bronze Age boundary fortification of earth and stone. This grand construction supposedly gets its name from Billy Norman, better known elsewhere as William the Conqueror, who apparently managed to get lost in a…