Category: Tabular Hills
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The Inclosure Act 1845: The Making of the Working Class
On this day in 1845, Parliament handed over vast stretches of common land with barely a backward glance. The Inclosure Act set up a new breed of official, the enclosure commissioner, who no longer needed Parliament’s blessing for every land grab. One rubber stamp did the job from then on. The scale of it is…
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Kilburn’s White Horse
Everyone assumes the horse is ancient. Some pagan relic, carved by shadowy ancestors for reasons lost to the mists of time. Wrong, as it happens. The Kilburn horse was the work of one Thomas Taylor, a local boy who left for London, made his fortune, and came home with an idea instead of sense. He…
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The Devil’s Leap
The Devil, it turns out, once lost an argument and dropped a boulder in a strop. That is the sort of local history we deserve more of. Walk along to Roulston Scar and you are standing on a summit 1,246 feet above the level of the sea, with the Vale of York and the Vale…
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Hood Grange
Behind this somewhat sad stone farmhouse lies eight centuries of quiet drama. A hermitage stood here before 1138, when monks moved in under Roger de Mowbray’s patronage. Cistercians took the place over, then shuffled off to Old Byland after five years, then on to Byland Abbey proper. Augustinian canons from nearby Newburgh Priory moved into…
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Sutton Bank’s Finest Object Today
The “finest view in England” decided to play hard to get on our trudge from Sutton Bank, and anything else worth photographing was equally uncooperative. So this posting is very much for the faithful. Those nerds who slow down for roadside trivia and feel a small thrill at a lump of iron with numbers on…
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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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Boltby Scar: The Quarry That Fetched Four Bob a Ton
A view along Boltby Scar, on the western edge of Hambleton Down, where the wind brushes across an Iron Age promontory fort and ancient round barrows. Beneath them lies a long-abandoned limestone quarry, silent now, but once echoing with the clang of hammers and the groan of wagons. Nearly a century ago, in 1927, it…
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Osmotherley Moor: Sheep, Turf and Shooting Rights
Dramatic skies hang over Black Hambleton, its summit almost clear of cloud. The view is from Solomon’s Lane, a grand name for a track that no longer exists. The surrounding expanse is Osmotherley Moor, part of which is “waste land of the manor,” now the subject of an application by the Open Spaces Society to…
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Gower Dale: Where a Railway Never Came
This is Gower Dale in the Hambleton Hills. On the far left stands the ruined shell of Gowerdale House. Rising in the centre distance is Hawnby Hill. A tranquil landscape, untouched by the grime and noise of industry. It could have been very different, had Victorian ambition not faltered. On Thursday, 19 May 1853, amid…
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Turtle Doves and the Dew Pond of Newton-on-Rawcliffe
As we pedalled merrily through the village of Newton-on-Rawcliffe, we stumbled upon this delightful little dew pond. It was instantly recognisable from the photographs we’d seen in the Birds on the Edge exhibition at the Danby Lodge National Park Centre. This pond, restored by the North York Moors Trust, is now a haven for wildlife,…