Category: Greenhow Moor
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Hrímfaxi, the goddess of the night’s horse, pulls her chariot through the dark sky
It was pretty bleak on Urra Moor this morning. I had half expected to see ‘The Hagmare of Orrer‘, a witch that was said to roam the moor in the guise of a horse. I had met this beast earlier on Greenhow Moor. The great plow of Watership Down thundering out of the freezing mist.…
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Today is not Boxing Day
Today might be the day after Christmas Day, the second day of Christmas, but it is a Sunday, Christmas Sunday, and so is not Boxing Day. That is tomorrow. So sayest the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines Boxing Day as “the first weekday after Christmas day, observed as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys,…
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Greenhow Moor, looking towards the old ironstone mine at Rud Scar
On the 16th June 1814, the stagecoach ‘England Rejoice’ set off from Stockton on bound for Whitby. It was the return leg of a new service offering weekly return trips with York and Stockton. The coach had left the Freemason’s Tavern, Whitby at “exactly” six o’clock on the Monday morning bound for York. The journey…
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Greenhow Botton
On the old 1857 O.S. map, this area is named as Greenhow Burton. Half a century later, it is mapped as Greenhow Botton. Such is the evolution of names over time. Or perhaps different surveyors misinterpreting the local dialect. The second word of the name derives from the Old Norse ‘Botn’ meaning a hollow. Off…
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Incline Top
My morning constitutional today featured a one way run from Bank Foot to Clay Bank over Urra Moor. And to save a bit of time I used the old railway incline to ascend to the moor top. I’d forgotten how much of a slog it is. Nowadays, I am, more often than not, descending on…
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First day of the grouse shooting season
The first day of the grouse shooting season so I took in a circuit via Urra and Greenhow Moors in the hope I might come across a shoot. It is not the “Glorious 12th”, of course, that was yesterday but being a Sunday the start is postponed for a day unless you are in Scotland…
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Ingleby Manor Ironstone Mine
Armed with a six-digit grid reference I have twice tried to locate the remains of the Ingleby Manor Ironstone Mine, and twice failed. The grid reference I obtained from the Catalogue of Cleveland Ironstone Mines by Peter Tuffs, the guru of local industrial archaeology. It was with trepidation then to discover it was to be…
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Round Hill Memorial Shelter
Many of you will know I don’t agree with memorials. Benches, plaques and rock carvings littering the moors. But this one has been tucked away discretely off major paths overlooking Greenhow Botton for 46 years and I didn’t know it existed until very recently. I thought it was a shooting butt at first. A circular,…
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Botton Head, site of a WW2 air crash
Climbed Botton Head onto Greenhow Moor in search of the site of a WW2 air crash. On 21 October 1940 an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk. V was returning to its base at RAF Linton on Ouse, just off the A19 north of York, from a raid on the Skoda factory in Czechoslovakia, crashing into the…
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Red Stone
The rainbow portends a squall. It’s easy to forget winter is approaching. This boundary stone on Greenhow Moor looks 18th century, marking the limit of the Feversham Estate. Now is it the ‘Red Stone’ that’s marked on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map? The location is about right but this stone doesn’t look significant enough to warrant a…