Tag: 20th Century
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Where Birch Meets Rust: A Forgotten Landmark
Descending from Highcliff Nab to Guisborough, I felt a sudden urge to revisit a landmark I often passed on my runs around these woods many years ago. This viewpoint, on top of a spoil heap from the Belmont Ironstone Mine, was mercifully spared the blight of commercial conifersâperhaps because even saplings had standards and found…
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Greenhow Botton with a Fleeting Glimpse the Birthplace of Ivor Cummings
A view down Greenhow Botton towards Roseberry, which distinctive shape barely manages to poke above the skyline. Remarkably, it is a clear dayâclear enough that, far off in the distance, from this the highest point of the North York Moors, Hartlepool is visible, gleaming faintly through a break in the clouds. Why bother mentioning Hartlepool,…
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A Mild Christmas and Damnable Corsets: A Hundred Years Ago in Yorkshire
A sunny Roseberry loiters under a moody grey cloud, creating a scene that could make even the most indifferent observer take out their iPhone. Light and shadow play their parts, flaunting a contrast that seems to suggest nature itself has a flair for the dramatic. But exactly one hundred years ago, the 9th of December…
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Jacksonâs BankâMedieval Trod
As you reach the top of Jacksonâs Bank, it is hard not to imagine that, at the turn of the last century, weary walkers resting upon these boulders were serenaded by the rather pastoral sounds of iron-laden trucks grinding, screeching, and clattering their way down that incline on the opposite side of Greenhow Botton. This…
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Westworth Reservoir: Gorse and Other Triumphs of Nature
In my Guisborough days, I would often run a circuit round Westworth Reservoir. This morning, in a fit of nostalgia, I returned to that old stomping ground. How changed it is. The former reservoir bed has given way to a jungle of gorse, now sprawling with abandon, save for a dank, overgrown marsh clinging feebly…
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Ellen Wilkinson: The Fiery Reformer of Middlesbrough East
It has been some time since I was last on Eston Nab, that famed vantage point over Teesside, whose viewsâoh, those familiar scenesâshift and churn like the Tees itself in flood, eternally restless, rarely still. Come with me, back to this day, 29 October, 100 years ago, 1924. The British people were trudging to the…
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Echoes of the Leven: A Riverâs Memory
A quick photo before raindrops splattered the camera lens. The River Leven is high, a few determined souls brave the weather, and the paths are mostly puddles. I have taken a photo from this spot before, though I only realised that after I got home. My computer, as ever, has a far better memory than…
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The Rise and Fall of Cod Beck Reservoir
Given the recent weather, I was quite taken aback to find Cod Beck Reservoir so low, although this is by no means unprecedented. I have a sneaking suspicion that Yorkshire Water has intentionally carried out a water release, perhaps as part of a scour test or some other enigmatic plan. Iâll resist from drawing any…
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1939: When Guisborough Welcomed Middlesbroughâs Evacuees
Highcliffe Nab, that well-known sandstone crag that dominates the view from Guisborough, has been the subject of these posts many times. But Kemplah, which sits in its shadow, doesn’t get nearly enough attention. The old settlers clearly thought this promontory was important since there’s evidence of both early British and Roman activity there. The name…
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The White Flint Legacy of Castleton
At the crest of an old tramway incline from the former silica quarries, once the workings of the Sheffield-based firm J. Grayson Lowood & Co. Ltd., one gazes across the Esk valley. Just off-centre in the distance lies the looming hump of Castleton Rigg, climbing to the highest point of the âFat Moors.â The village…