Category: North York Moors
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Crabdale Beck: The Vanishing of G834
A venture up to the Swainby Shooting House on Whorlton Moor, part of the Snilesworth Estate. This photo is looking up Crabdale Beck which drains the moor. The “house” can be seen on the skyline if you look closely. Crabdale Beck flows the same way it has for ten thousand years, albeit a bit gentler.…
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Drawing the Blood String: An 18th-Century Ritual
I had to negotiate this suckler herd grazing quietly under Easby Moor today. That stare. Intense, almost hostile. Yet these were docile animals, and generally always have been — which is precisely why farmers could do things to them that would make a surgeon wince. Yorkshire has a particular buried history here. “Drawing” the “nature…
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Ticksey How
The Smeathorns Road across the moor to Castleton. I have ridden it more times than I can count, and today I nearly missed it again. A boundary stone. Right there, behind the stock fence. Weathered sandstone, inscribed “S Ticksey how” — marking the old boundary between the parishes of Stanghow and Moorsholm. The wire mesh…
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Phase 2 of Roseberry’s Facelift Begins
Last week, the powers that be helicoptered huge black bags of stone and gravel onto the south flank of Roseberry Topping, ready for this year’s phase of its major path upgrading. I have been anxious to see the progress. To the left of the leftmost foxglove, the bridleway, after climbing up from the Folly field,…
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A Morning on Newton Moor
Word had reached me that this nineteenth-century boundary stone, marking the old parish line between Hutton Lowcross and Newton, had fallen over. It has not been broken, nor properly buried — just balanced upright and packed around with a few small stones. Frankly, it is rather remarkable that it stood for over 200 years. Or…
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Before the Path Gets Upgraded
Yesterday I climbed Roseberry Topping with no firm ideas, but found one on the way down. This worn path down the southeast flank is scheduled for upgrading. Not this year, perhaps, but soon enough. I wanted a record of it as it is. The path along the fence line — the one the solitary walker…
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The House That Roads Built
Standing on Cliff Rigg on an overcast May morning, the view is, not to put too fine a point on it, rather spectacular. The valley of the River Leven spreads below, patchwork fields rolling away to the Cleveland Hills, and a small cluster of houses sits quietly along Dikes Lane. One of them stops you…
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Elm Houses: A Story of Two Bransdale Farms
Tucked into a remote part of Bransdale, Elm Houses has a history worth telling. What is today one tidy holiday cottage surrounded by idle farm buildings was once two entirely separate farms: High and Low Elm House. On the right stands High Elm House, a long 18th-century range. A lintel stone dated 1780 records its…
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Echoes in the Vale: The Ghostly Rise and Fall of Leven Vale Cottages
By the mid-1850s, “Ironstone Fever” had Cleveland in its grip. The success at Eston tempted the Trustees of the young Robert Bell Turton to open up the Kildale Estate through an 1855 Act of Parliament. Investors fell for the “rabbit hole theory” — the tall story that John Marley had stumbled upon Eston’s underground riches…
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A New View, a New Muddle
The recent clear felling of a block of forestry in Ayton Banks Wood has opened up a new view of Roseberry. The commercial timber has gone, leaving a few gangly birch trees to stand guard over the valley. It turns out that Gribdale Terrace, that isolated row of white cottages, has a history which is…