Tag: National Trust
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A vote to ban ‘trail-hunting’ on National Trust land
Regular readers of this blog will know I volunteer for the National Trust on properties on the North York Moors. I do this principally to give something back to an organisation whose values I fully support. I am not fantastically enthused about old houses and gardens, it is conservation and the natural environment that interest…
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Scarth Wood Moor – a Neolithic village?
I’ve run across Scarth Wood Moor near Osmotherley many times in orienteering races but I can’t honestly remember encountering this boulder field. This is not surprising as, looking back at the 2019 map, I see nothing on the orienteering map, any exposed boulders were not considered significant enough to have been mapped. The boulders have…
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Sunday morning climbing Roseberry
The National Trust acquired the main western slope of Roseberry Topping in 1984 and, by July 1995, had spent £500k on improvements with another £500k planned over the next four years. Much of this money was spent on footpath improvement which had been somewhat neglected when in private ownership. With folks climbing Roseberry increasing year…
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Jet mining on Roseberry Common
An intricate necklace of 110 beads of jet was found in a burial cist in Kilmartin, Argyll. It has been dated to between 2050 and 1800 BC. The jet is considered to be ‘Whitby Jet’. Jet is the fossilised remains of the Araucaria or monkey puzzle tree that were buried in marine sediments during the…
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Dovedale
In the south of the Moors. It’s been over eighteen months since I was last here. The rich grassland of Dovedale is part of the National Trust’s Bridestones property. Prior to 2015, the dale was heavily infested with bracken, but since then the Trust has carried out annual cutting, by hand usually in two sessions.…
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Bransdale Mill
Volunteering with the National Trust in Bransdale, planting 350 wildflower ‘plugs’. I must qualify that: I didn’t do all that number alone, it was a collective effort. But an opportunity to post another photo of the mill, from the rear, the north aspect clearly showing the water race funnel into the building where the water…
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On the 1st April 1933 …
… the Nazis carried out their very first nationwide, planned action against the Jewish people, an economic boycott of Jewish businesses (although large employers were exempted). It was the first openly anti-Semitic act of Hitler’s new government and was ostensively in response to international protests, notably in America, in support of the Jews but also…
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Mount Grace Priory
Most photos of Mount Grace Priory feature the late medieval Carthusian charterhouse. The ruined church is an iconic image. The house is often overlooked. The former guest house of the monastery was converted into a private house in 1654 probably by Lord Darcy and substantially renovated and extended by Sir Issac Lowthian Bell about 1900. The…
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A birthday clean up for Roseberry
Roseberry Topping, a National Trust property, was busy over the weekend when the good folk of Teesside seized the opportunity to exercise whilst enjoying the snow. But today, with the last of the snow finally melting, the remains of their adventures are revealed. The debris of broken sledges, the ubiquitous plastic bottles and drinks cans, doggie presents,…
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Aerial Ropeway Base, Cliff Rigg Wood
Standing proud in Cliff Rigg Wood, a concrete base that supported one of the steel trestles for an aerial ropeway that ran from Ayton Bank Ironstone Mine to sidings at the west end of Cliff Ridge where the ore was loaded into railway trucks. As the trestles were of a tripod design there would have…