Tag: 19th-century

  • Blue Lagoon

    Blue Lagoon

    It definitely had a blue tinge about it, a result of the mineral washing out of the alum shales. Blue Lagoon or Blue lake is a late-19th-century reservoir built to provide a head of water to hydraulic hoist and water turbines at Home Farm. It was built by Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, the industrialist and…

  • Codhill Farm and Bold Venture

    Codhill Farm and Bold Venture

    It’s not the most obvious place to site a farm, on the col between Highcliff Nab and Great Ayton Moor. A col unsheltered from both northerly and southerly winds. The col was formed as a spillway to the south from lakes formed between the north-facing escarpment of the Cleveland Hills and the glacier flowing along…

  • Scarth Wood Moor

    Scarth Wood Moor

    Another one of those local tales. I was told by an Osmotherley resident a few months ago, that this gulley, about 3 metres long and a metre or so deep, was used for rifle practice by a “home guard” unit during WW1. Now I’m not sure if there was a home guard during that war.…