Category: North Yorkshire
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Humps and Bumps: The Ghost of Parva Broctune
Scan this green pasture of Parva Broctune and you will spot the neat ‘S’ of Little Broughton Beck slicing through a quilt of humps and bumps. It looks gentle enough. It is not. Those undulations are the bones of a village. The land keeps its own ledger, and it does not forget. Wind the clock…
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Hob Holes: Where the Hob Lived and the Jet-Diggers Evicted
Runswick Bay takes its character from the Hob Holes, raw wounds in the shale cliffs cut by the North Sea going about its daily vandalism. They are not just the work of water on stone. They are the blank spaces where memory used to live. In those gaps sat the Hob, a local figure of…
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Shoring up the Leven
I have been fretting about the riverbank by Holmes Bridge at Little Ayton for a while now, the way you fret about a loose tooth. Each flood leaves that electricity pole looking more exposed, more hopeful of a swim. And every time the river rises, the public footpath from the bridge looks closer to stepping…
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More Than a Water Tower
At first glance, this stone tower at Ingleby Arncliffe looks like a small, rugged castle left behind by history. It is easy to imagine it as a lookout, guarding the Cleveland Hills. But its story is not about defence or conflict. It is about hope, craft, and a quiet promise made for the future. This…
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Great Ayton’s Boxing Day Ritual: Auf Wiedersehen?
In 2004, hunting foxes with dogs was banned. This did not, however, end the “sport”. It merely trimmed it back and left three flavours of “hunting” on the menu. First comes trail hunting. This involves following a scent of animal urine laid on a route that is meant to be unknown to the riders. In theory,…
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Sleights and the Perilous Descent of Blue Bank
Once upon a time, Sleights must have seemed the very picture of rural contentment: a quiet, respectable village where weary visitors might escape the clamour of industrial England amid green hills and fresh air. It was, one suspects, precisely the sort of place where Whitby’s prosperous merchants might choose to end their days, away from…
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Easby Abbey
Last Sunday’s wander through Richmondshire brought us to Easby Abbey, a place where ruin and landscape merge into a single, haunting picture beside the River Swale. Artists and antiquaries have long been drawn to it—J. M. W. Turner included—captivated by its quiet grandeur. The abbey was founded around 1152–1155 by Roald, constable of Richmond Castle,…
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Aske Hall: Elegance with a Shadow
I am not often drawn to country estates, where the visitor is welcome only if he keeps to the designated path and obeys the “do not step on the grass” signs. Yet Aske Hall is a striking exception. This Georgian house, framed by parkland complete with lake and shaped by Capability Brown, wears its history…
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From Thornborough Henges to the Marmion Tower
A visit to the Thornborough Henges, a trio of massive Neolithic earthworks near the River Ure, offered little for ground photography. Though the banks rise up to four metres, their layout is best seen from the air, so I have linked to this Wikipedia image. Once standing above wetlands, the site is now surrounded by…
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Kirby Knowle: A Castle with Two Names and One Too Many Stories
Towering above the western edge of the quiet village of Kirby Knowle, this brooding grand house is marked on Ordnance Survey maps as “Newbuilding.” The estate agents, less taken with that name, now refer to it in brochures as plain Kirby Knowle. The asking price is £7 million, in case you are tempted. The “New…