Category: Roseberry Topping
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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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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, todayâApril 14thâis âCuckoo Day,â the date when this allegedly symbolic bird is supposed to announce its return with its distinctive…
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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 â gorse. Its yellow blooms, reeking of coconut and…
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Cleveland: A County No One Wanted
All Foolsâ Day 1974âthe perfect occasion for bureaucratic tomfoolery. On this particular day, the North Riding of Yorkshire relinquished half of Roseberry Topping to the nascent âCounty of Cleveland.â A curious choice of name, given that âClevelandâ means âhilly landâ in Old English, whereas this new county was largely flat. Nonetheless, the boundary was drawn,…
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An Abandoned Stone Quarry on Ayton Bank
Someone once told me, or perhaps I read it somewhere, that there were twelve quarries along the edge of the escarpment between Roseberry Topping and Easby Moor, including the one on the summit itself. Do not expect a citation; it is just one of those pointless facts that have lodged themselves in my brain, refusing…
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A Nisly Day over Aireyholme
An old book of weather proverbs I have offers an array of predictions for March, ensuring that, whatever the weather, one can always find something vaguely reassuring within its pages. One such gem is a French proverb: âWhen March is like April, April will be like March.â How profound. The notion of âApril showersâ stems…
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Family Farms or Tax Havens? The Debate Over Farmland Inheritance
A picturesque view of Roseberry looming over the Cleveland Vale, a landscape dotted with the usual mix of arable and livestock farming. A typical lowland farm grows wheat, barley, and oilseed rape while also rearing cattle and sheep. These farms are mostly family-run or tenanted, though one suspects that âfamily-runâ has a rather flexible definition…
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Roseberry Topping and the Lingering Trace of a Railway
A view of Roseberry Topping that will be familiar to anyone enduring the A173. A fleeting moment of brightness in an otherwise wet and windy day spent planting trees in Bransdale. Of mild interest here is the embankment, now smothered in yellow-flowering gorse and lined with skeletal silver birch trees. This was once a curving…
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4th February, 1921: Redundancies at Roseberry Ironstone Mine
His day began long before any sensible person would even consider waking. At 4:30 in the morning, he and his wife dragged themselves from their bed, greeted not by comfort but by the biting cold. The morningâs first ordeal was the outhouseâan unenviable journey in deep winter, where snow, ice, and the ever-present risk of…
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Slippery Paths and Roseberryâs Summerhouse
A supposedly âgentlerâ path to the top of Roseberry Topping winds up the southern side from the Summerhouse Field. After last nightâs heavy rain, the path has become a veritable death trap, with these walkers wisely prefering the rough grass for better footing. Ascending it is manageable, but descending? Practically suicidal. Avoiding the path might…