Category: Garfitt Gap
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1772: A Path, A Stone, A Hanging
The so-called āMinersā Trodā, with Cold Moor rising beyond it, cuts a broad, unsightly scar along the hillside courtesy of the forestry workers. The pathās name comes from the nineteenth-century jet-miners, though it is unlikely they were its first users. That large boulder to the left bears the date ā1772ā and a scatter of initials,…
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk to shoot. In 1896, however, it was just another typical mixed farm on the North York Moors, run…
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POW! WHACK! The Circus Returns to Town
On this day in 1966, the campy spectacle of Batman made its debut on American television. Adam West donned the cape, Burt Ward chirped as Robin, and Cesar Romero refused to shave his moustache to play the Joker. Although by the time it hit British screens, I was too old, but I remember it well.…
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From Drainage to Divination: The Cheshire Stoneās Secrets
I recently stumbled upon the theory that a stone ā the Cheshire, or perhaps the Cheddar Stone as some insist on calling it ā perched on on the edge of Urra Moor, has a natural basin which has been carefully modified in prehistoric times by the addition of a notch to channel the water outflow…
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Morning Sun on Cold Moor
A panorama of Cold Moor from the vantage point of the Wainstones; to the right, the col known as Garfit Gap. What caught my eye in this view is the way the morning sun, hanging low, highlights the remains of the old jet mining drifts. These drift entrances, now long collapsed, appear as V-shaped scars…
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Cheese, Stones, and a Summer Solstice Alignment
I’ve been diving back into that book, “Rock Art and Ritual,” the one I got off eBay a few weeks back. It’s been giving me the itch to go revisit some of the out of the way nooks and crannies on the North York Moors. So today, I took a little jaunt around Urra Moor,…
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Prehistoric Rock Art at Garfit Gap
Garfit Gap, that well-known col on the Cleveland Way nestling between Cold Moor and the Wainstones, is one of the four natural routes climbing up from the Cleveland Plain, southward over the barrier of Cleveland Hills into Bilsdale. Each route involves a formidable climb. Nowadays, though, the Clay Bank route, aided and abetted by the…
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A chilly view across Garfit Gap to Hasty Bank
Right of centre is Whingroves, a farm which appears to have evolved into industrial pheasant rearing. However, in 1896 it wasĀ a typical mixed farm run by Isaac Garbutt, a surname that has been on the Bilsdale parish register since the 16th century. That year, Isaac’s wife Mary gave birth to a boy who was…
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On this day in 1933
āIt was icy cold in Munich on New Yearās Day [1933]. Adolf Hitler was drinking coffee over breakfast at his luxurious apartment at 16 Prinzregentenplatz. The morning papers made gloomy reading about his political prospects in the coming year. A critical article in the social democratic newspaper VorwƤrts headlined āHitlerās Rise and Fallā suggested the…
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Do you want the good news or the bad news?
I’ll start with the good. Yesterday the Government announced that “Legislation will be brought forward to prevent the burning of heather and other vegetation on protected blanket bog habitats“. This is great news. A recognition at long last that the burning of heather moorlands is detrimental to their peat structure and their natural habitats. Burning…