Tag: 20th Century
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Calm and wide, the River North Tyne, gently flows below Wark Bridge. It is not behaving naturally. It looks tame because, in a very real sense, it has been tamed. For most of its history the North Tyne did what upland rivers do: it raged when it rained and starved when it did not. Two…
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From Riot to Rainbow Bunting
Killing time before the Aberdeen ferry, we turned a corner in Lerwick and walked straight into their Pride March. Shetland, June 2026. Granite streets, rainbow bunting, children playing snare drums under a rain-filled sky. A reminder that this all started somewhere very different. The first Pride was not a parade. It was a brawl. On…
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Otters Wick: The End of the Bohus
The tranquil waters of Otters Wick hides a tragic history. In the above photo, Black Skerry sits darkly left of centre; just out of shot to the left lies the jagged headland where the steel barque Bohus was lost in April 1924. The tragedy came down to a single, stupid mistake. Seeking a bearing in…
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The Last Traces of the Belmont Ironstone Mine
Green “Yorkshire” fields in early spring, and nothing here looks remotely industrial. Yet the three red-brick Edwardian cottages sitting neatly in the middle distance were built for the men who ran Belmont Ironstone Mine, and the large brick building in the distance was once the stables for the horses that worked underground. The large concrete…
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Fog, a Hollow Way and a Reservoir That Never Was
The watershed between the River Esk and River Rye tributaries was today more than a geographical line. It was a weather frontier. While Castleton and Westerdale basked in spring sunshine a mile or two away to the north, Farndale sulked under a damp mist so thick you could almost wring it out. From the aptly…
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Hanging Stone Dam and the Fall of Sir Joseph
The pond in this photo was built in 1880 by Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease to power hydraulic machinery at his Home Farm half a kilometre downstream. It served that purpose until the 1950s, after which it became a swamp. Local volunteers restored it in 2004/5. Known originally as Hanging Stone Dam, it sits at the…
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Not Guilty: The Carlton Bank Case, 1972
Carlton Bank. Even on a dreich day there was a surprising number of folk around. Yet, in May 1972, it was the scene of one of the more extraordinary legal cases the North Riding has ever seen. A potato merchant named Kenneth Saddington drove five miles up to these moors one Saturday night with a…
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Dale Head—Fire, Rumour and a Long Silence
Ryedale demanded a break. The old Stephen Thwaite farmstead has an irresistible collection of “stoups” and “hemmells” worth ten minutes of any cyclist’s time. Then the sun did what the sun does when it wants to make a point. It threw a spotlight clean across Wheat Beck and landed it squarely on Dale Head House.…
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Fremington Edge Chert: The Stone That Made Your Teacup
A view from Reeth Low Moor looking across at the scars gouged onto Fremington Edge. Those wounds in this hillside are not the work of nature. They are what happens when industry decides it needs something badly enough. Chert quarrying in Swaledale ran from around 1900 to approximately 1950, driven almost entirely by the pottery…
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The Pimps of Roseberry
Today’s photo is, of course, of Roseberry Topping. That dry stone wall running up the slope marks the boundary between the parishes of Newton-under-Roseberry and Great Ayton. Before the great landslip of 1912 it ran all the way to the summit. Looking at a photograph taken before 1912, you can see vegetated ground running right…