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 watching me with an air of mild despair, willing me to shift myself so it could get at the spring water.
The troughs go back to the 19th century, fed by piped water from a spring up on the moors, or so the story goes. The name itself is anyone’s guess. Some reckon it was just some wag having a laugh at the village’s expense. The earliest mention I have managed to dig up comes from an 1869 report on Moorsholm’s Flower Show, printed in the Whitby Gazette1Moorsholm. Whitby Gazette, 4 September 1869. Page 4.:
“Not many years ago, the place was filled with stagnant ponds, which earned for it the name of “ Moorsholm Docks.” Now all these filthy cesspools have given place to neatly enclosed gardens the whole length of the village, and the old, mud cottages are fast disappearing.
The earliest Ordnance Survey map backs this up, more or less, showing a well roughly where you would expect one to be.
- 1Moorsholm. Whitby Gazette, 4 September 1869. Page 4. ↩︎
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