Tag: history
-
Wheeldale Lodge: From Shooting to Youth Hostel to Private Residence
My memories of Wheeldale Lodge are, regrettably, a jumble. One of the earliest involves the unremarkable joy of dunking sore feet in Wheeldale Beck after a needlessly long march across the Lyke Wake Walk. This was in 1969, and my 17-year-old self had been trudging for twelve and a half hours. The route comes down…
-
St. Anne’s Church, Catterick
I found myself in Catterick with ten minutes to spare. Grand plans of a leisurely stroll quickly shrank to a brisk glance around. The village tries very hard to be charming, with its oversized green and a stream obligingly flowing by. One would not expect such rural pretence given its awkward position—wedged between a military…
-
The Ancient Hollow-Way to Nowhere in Particular
The Public Bridleway from the hamlet of Urra winds its way up to another Right of Way that follows Billy’s Dyke, that Bronze Age boundary fortification of earth and stone. This grand construction supposedly gets its name from Billy Norman, better known elsewhere as William the Conqueror, who apparently managed to get lost in a…
-
Sunset Over Kikdale and a Sporting Legacy
I suppose I’m not necessarily a diurnal sort of person. But at this time of year, I have yet to shake off the winter habit of retreating indoors as soon as the temperature drops and dusk approaches. So, finding myself on Park Nab, looking over Kildale at sunset yesterday, was something of an anomaly. The…
-
Cleveland: A County No One Wanted
All Fools’ Day 1974—the perfect occasion for bureaucratic tomfoolery. On this particular day, the North Riding of Yorkshire relinquished half of Roseberry Topping to the nascent “County of Cleveland.” A curious choice of name, given that “Cleveland” means “hilly land” in Old English, whereas this new county was largely flat. Nonetheless, the boundary was drawn,…
-
Salts Mill: Industry, Philanthropy, and an Uncomfortable Truth
The River Aire spills over a weir past Salts Mill, a vast textile factory that was the sole reason for the existence of the so-called ‘model village’ of Saltaire. Both the mill and the village were the brainchild of Sir Titus Salt (1803–1876), a man famed for his paternalistic attitude towards his workforce. In what…
-
Lake Greenhow: A Forgotten Relic of the Ice Age
Yesterday’s post led me to glaciers, glacial lakes, and the like. At Botton Head, my imagination ran riot. Difficult as it is to picture now, 10,000 years ago, a glacier covered the Tees Valley before me. The ice sheet, it is well-known, never quite managed to smother the North York Moors. So, naturally, I wondered…
-
Newtondale: A Gorge Too Big for Its Stream
North Dale sits at the top end of Newtondale, a gorge that stretches all the way to Pickering. Newtondale is an oddity, or so everyone says, because the little Pickering Beck, which now trickles through it, could never have gouged out such a deep, narrow valley. At its tightest points, the valley is only 500…
-
On this day in 1933, Germany passed the Enabling Act
Also known as the “Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich,” the act was a charmingly titled law that, in reality, handed Hitler absolute power and turned Germany into a totalitarian dictatorship. Yes, the “Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich”—a masterclass in euphemism. A harmless little law that merely allowed…
-
An Abandoned Stone Quarry on Ayton Bank
Someone once told me, or perhaps I read it somewhere, that there were twelve quarries along the edge of the escarpment between Roseberry Topping and Easby Moor, including the one on the summit itself. Do not expect a citation; it is just one of those pointless facts that have lodged themselves in my brain, refusing…