Tag: 18th-century
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Guisborough Races, 1784: Asses, Mens’ sack race, Ladies, and a Soap-tail’d Pig
Guisborough, population around 17,000. At the turn of the 19th-century, in the 1801 census, it was a mere 1,719. This was the eve of the industrial revolution, nevertheless it was the largest town in the area, the focal point of trade, although the alum industry, once a major employer, was in decline. Another industry which…
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Yearby
An early, gloomy start from Yearby Bank back home via Eston Nab, a prominence which used to be a regular run but now I rarely go. After a few minutes, the sun broke over the hill revealing super lighting over the coastal plain. Yearby is that quiet hamlet at the foot of Yearby Bank, notorious,…
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In search of prehistoric rock art
What a dreich morning. Low cloud meant it was a day not conducive for photography, so I went to look for some prehistoric rock art on Garfit Gap. Garfit Gap is the col between the Wainstones and Cold Moor and contains many boulders on which with rock art has been identified. Now I’ve looked for…
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A rare view of a traffic-free High Street in Great Ayton
The council’s hard at work tidying up the pot-holes, pending the arrival of the Tour of Britain cycle race a week on Wednesday (7th September). The typical Victorian-looking ediface on the left is the village hall. It started out life as a Wesleyan Methodist chapel in 1862 and was given to the village by Sir…
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Jenny Bradley stone
My mind was piqued by the following sentence in a 1906 article in the Whitby Gazette by that prolific writer on all North Yorkshire matters, John Fairfax-Blakeborough (1883-1976): A mile or so from the Nab is to be seen, by the side of the road, a stone which, to the traveller unversed in local legend,…
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Wilton village
Perhaps the most least known village of Teesside. Its tweeness belies its proximity to the petrochemical industries of the Wilton International Site, or whatever it calls itself nowadays. Wilton offers plenty of photogenic opportunities. The ‘Castle’, rebuilt 1807 and now a golf club; the old school, built 1855, and the church, rebuilt 1907/8. I think…
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The Stone House
You would have thought that a structure dating back to at least the 18th-century and of sigifnicant historic value to be Grade II listed by Historic England would be cherished and looked after. But not so, this manmade cave on Ash Fell overlooking Ravenstonedale is being used as a dump for redundant fencing and other…
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Salisbury Crags
A line of crags of igneous rock formed 342 million years ago, when lava erupted at Arthur’s Seat through the underlying sedimentary rock. The crags are famous in the world of geology because it is where James Hutton (1726 – 1797), ‘the father of modern geology‘, concluded that the magma intruding into the existing rock…
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The Dunn’s Charity for the Benefit of the Poor of Kildale
In the churchyard at Kildale is an 18th-century chest tomb, which is a Listed Monument in its own right. The inscription is weathered and covered with moss and lichen so very hard to read but Cedric Anthony provides a transcript in his book ‘Glimpses of Kildale History‘: Here lyeth the body of Joseph Dunn who…
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Spite Hall
There’s an old dialect word ‘gongoozle‘ which I rather like. It means to “leisurely watch the passage of boats, from the bank of a canal, lock or bridge”. Exactly which dialect is unclear. Some say Lincolnshire, some say the Lake District, some say Cockney. It is first recorded in 1904 in the “Glossary of Canal…