Tag: history
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‘Ohensberg’
The bridleway between Aireyholme Farm and Hutton village, passing through the col on Roseberry Common, is referred to as ‘the great road of Ohensberg‘ in one of the foundation charters of Guisborough Priory of about 1120. The original is in medieval Latin of course but nevertheless it sounds as if it was a main route…
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The lonely death of Christopher Hutchinson
A farm with a strange name, Stingamires. Named after the gill beyond. But what came first, the farm or the gill? The farmhouse and attached outbuilding are Grade II Listed. The farmhouse was built in the 17th-century as a thatched longhouse typical of the North York Moors and containing a full cruck truss. A year…
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Kirby Bank — a battleground between a David and a Goliath
In 1854 there was a legal dispute over the boundary between Bilsdale and Kirby which has been decribed as a ‘David and Goliath’ legal battle. The plaintiff (he who brought the case) was the rich and influential Lord Feversham, Lord of the Manor of Bilsdale. The defendant was James Emerson who was described in the…
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“New Holy Trinity Secondary School foundation stone laid”
Walking along the Cleveland Way over Codhill Slack, I was reminded of a posting from 2015 when stepping onto this broken piece of flagstone. I surmised then it was half of a foundation stone from the Holy Trinity Church of England Senior School in Halifax. Fifty metres or so further on is the other half.…
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Rosedale & Lastingham Light Railway
In 1896, the Light Railways Act 1896 was enacted which allowed new ‘light railways’ to be expediently built, principally in rural areas. A light railway was “one constructed with lighter rails and structures, running at a slower speed, with poorer accommodation for passengers and less facility for freight”, and working “with less stringent standards of…
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Commondale Bleach Mill
Another item on my bucket list ticked off. Commondale Beck is barely two miles long from its start at the meeting of Sleddale and Ravengill Becks to its confluence with the River Esk, although its meanderings might push it over this distance. About 175 metres from Commondale Railway Station on the west Guisborough parish side…
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Newton-under-Roseberry
Otherwise known as Newton-in-Cleveland. The base camp for any ascent of Roseberry Topping. The renown local historian John Walker Ord, writing in 1846, described Newton as “a small, dirty, insignificant village, consisting of a few small huts, without any pretensions to beauty or order whatever”. Twelve years later, Walter White (an early tourist from Berkshire)…
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“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!”
Ah, warm sunshine and lambs gambolling in the fields. A sure sign that Spring is here. Everyone knows the nursery rhyme. Once said to have been a proletarian cry in the Middle Ages because the tremendous demand for wool meant that farming land had been turned into pasture for sheep. Thousands of farmhands were thrown…
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Side-tracked by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
I am slowly getting around every boundary stone on these northern moors. This one is inscribed “RY 1752”, identical to the stone 600m or so to the south west. Ralph Yoward must have had a bulk buy. 1752 — George II was on the throne; the 11 days between 3rd and 13th September inclusive were…
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Joan Hutton-Wilson Memorial
I’ve come across this memorial before, in a bracken infested copse just off the steep Trenet Bank out of Bilsdale. I was almost surprised to find it: 1968 Joan Hutton-Wilson who loved Bilsdale Not that I thought it would have disappeared. The main photo is the view from the memorial. Chop Gate is centre, the…