Tag: history
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Quakers’ Causeway
Stanghow Moor has not seen my studs in years, and it is easy to see why. It sits west of Birk Brow, bleak and boggy as you like, with barely a path or sheep trod worth the name cut through it. I can’t believe I used to run over this stuff. One path does buck…
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1953: The Moors Were Burning Then, Too
Moorland fires have a way of making headlines only for as long as the ground stays dry. This summer’s blazes filled the news for weeks, and then some rain came and the story simply went quiet, whether that counts as relief or amnesia is anyone’s guess. What follows is an article from the Cleveland Standard,…
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Stagnant Ponds No More
Moorsholm Docks do not often see me cycling past, which is a shame, since the place has a story worth telling more than once. These six sunken sandstone troughs sit along the High Street of a village that could not look more like a postcard if it tried. This time round, a collared dove stood…
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Cattersty Cliffs, Not Quite Jurassic
Ironstone was found at Skinningrove in 1847, and the Cleveland coast has not looked back since. By 1874 the Loftus Iron Company had two blast furnaces lit and roaring above the village, built on land leased from the Maynard estate. Boom turned to bust within three years. The company went under, sold at auction in…
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Rosedale Wyke and the View Towards Kettleness Point
That distinctive headland on the horizon, Kettleness Point, has swallowed ships the way other coastlines swallow litter. Four of them tell you all you need to know about the sea’s manners, which is to say it has none. Take the Viola, a 1,900-ton steamer bound from Spain to Middleborough with iron ore. Thick fog rolled…
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A Riot of Purple, and a Man with No Clothes
A fine display of blooming heather around Captain Cook’s Monument, on a moor left unmanaged for grouse shooting. Here is a strange tale I have come across. In November 1856, the York Herald reported that a fine young man, plainly out of his senses, had been found near Lockwood Beck on the Whitby road. He…
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The Legend of Oswy’s Well
The ghost footpath post last week got me thinking about Roseberry Well, tucked near the summit on the northern side. It has been a fair while since I last went up — or rather down, since the best approach is from above — though it is not the sort of thing likely to have wandered…
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Bronze Age Guesswork on Wayworth Moor
The Moors are littered with standing stones, and behind each is its own little mystery. Some mark old routes. Some are gateposts that have outlived their gates. A few might be medieval crosses, worn down by weather and time until nobody can be certain. Others seem to have drawn an arbitrary line in the earth…
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Lockwood Beck—As Good As Loch Katrine Water, Apparently
You can cycle the same route a hundred times, past the same stretch of hedge and stone, and see nothing. Then one day something stops you dead. That is what happened with this bridge, tucked beside the busy A171 between Guisborough and Whitby. It has the look of great age about it, and my first…
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Whorl Hill and its Buried Treasure
Scarth Wood Moor. Third Thursday running. Too hot for ditch digging, and my back agreed with the thermometer. An early finish saved the day, though. A glance over the wall gave up a proper reward: Whorl Hill, sat there like a pudding basin turned upside down, the glacial leftover that gave Whorlton parish its name.…