Category: Guisborough
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Guisborough from Hanging Stone
Following yesterday’s post featuring a quotation from William Camden’s 1586 book ‘Britannia’, his guide to the British Isles, I thought I should post about what he had to say about Guisborough and the alum industry, which, in the Elizabethan times, was still a novelty. This is the first half of the paragraph following yesterday’s quotation.…
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Pilgrimage of Grace
On the 19th October 1536, Henry VIII lost his patience at the rebels on the Pilgrimage of Grace. He wrote to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk: “You are to use all dexterity in getting the harness and weapons of the said rebels brought in to Lincoln or other sure places, and cause all the boats…
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Ash Bank
The last time I used this track up to Highcliff Nab, was several winters ago, in the dark. It was then, as I’ve always remembered it, a quagmire, enclosed by tall forestry conifers. So it was quite surprising to find the bank clear-felled revealing a surprising view of Guisborough. And removed from the perpetual shade,…
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Hutton Hall
Sir Joseph Pease had this pile built in 1866, and lost it in the banking crash of 1902. It was subsequently repurchased by his son, Sir Alfred Pease, in 1935, and has since been converted into flats and apartments. In 1937 Sir Alfred agreed for it to become home for 20 refugee children aged between…
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Lowcross Swangs
A pastoral scene looking across Lowcross Swangs to Barnabyside of Eston Moor. A ‘swang‘ is a Yorkshire term for a low-lying piece of grassland that is liable to flooding. To the left of the photo, the drainage is west to the River Tame and eventually the Tees; to the right, the flow is east into…
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On Roseberry summit
A dash up Roseberry before the rain came. Not many folks up here today, bliss. A hazy view towards Guisborough. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Cho fad ‘s bhios craobh ‘san choille, Bidh foil na Chuimeaneach
My Dad once gave me a piece of advice that has remained with me always. He said there are three subjects that should be avoided in conversations: sex, politics, and religion. Of course that was way before the social media so he would have meant talking in pubs but I have generally tried to stick…
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The fields of Hutton Lowcross
A blue sky first thing this morning. Enough to momentarily forget our troubles. Plenty of runners and dog walkers. The hills are still open, they’re not in lockdown. Yet. Lockdown, an American word first recorded in 1973 meaning the temporary confinement of prisoners to their cells for all of the day. Quarantine, on the other…
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Highcliff Nab
“Overhanging the romantic and picturesque vale of Gisborough, a bold prominent rock rears its reverend head, hoary with mosses and lichens, and rent into vast chasms by the storms and tempests of centuries. It is skirted to the north with rich plantations of fir and venerable forests of oak; towards the south it is surrounded…
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Former workshops and stables, Belmont Ironstone mine
Around the back of the impressive range of buildings used for stabling the ponies that were used underground in the Belmont Ironstone Mine. They are probably the best-preserved surface remains of mine buildings in Cleveland and have found use once again for stables. In the 1970s I remember them being used for housing pigs. Or…