Category: North York Moors
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Toad in the Hole
How thoughtful the keepers appear to be, fashioning what looks like a charming wildlife pond in the middle of the grouse moor. A touching gesture, if one overlooks the small detail that this idyllic pool is also a shooting butt where folk crouch, lie in wait, and unleash a storm of shot at birds driven…
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The Bottom End of Castleton, Where a Door Closed…
I had been leafing through Joseph Ford’s “Some Reminiscences and Folk Lore of Danby Parish and District”, when one small passage stopped me in my tracks. Ford described the steady trickle of those who slipped away from the Esk Valley in the nineteenth century, chasing whispers of a new life across the ocean. Among them…
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Clearing the Blackthorn: The Mother of the Woods Fights Back
A grey, soaking day settles over the National Trust property at Port Mulgrave. Rain drips from every branch and bramble. The task at hand: cutting back the blackthorn regrowth that is threatening to re-swallow the public footpath through a tangle of unyielding woodland. Far below, the North Sea heaves and claws at the base of…
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High Hazel Heads
Hidden deep in a dark conifer plantation, where Goldcrests tweet high among the needles — or so I was told, an old man’s hearing failing to pick up the high frequencies — lies the forgotten farmstead of High Hazel Heads. Few come here now, and fewer still would guess that beneath these trees once lay…
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Echoes over the Rye: The Now and Then of Hawnby
Perched high above the River Rye, on a lonely spur between moorland becks, stands the village of Hawnby. On a damp November morning, its muted greens melt into the hills around it. With houses dressed in matching tones, it has the look of an estate village—an echo of a time when the landlord demanded order,…
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The Northernmost Kilns: Commondale’s Forgotten Industry
A view up the narrow valley of Commondale, taken from the weathered lime kilns that still cling to the slopes above Coble Hall. Crumbling and defiant, I reckon they must be the most northerly kilns in the North York Moors, silent witnesses to a brief and curious chapter of industrial ambition. Built and operated between…
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Under the Beech: Kildale’s Tribute to the Fallen of WW2
In the quiet heart of Kildale stands this modest stone shelter. Walkers on the Cleveland Way pause here to rest, unwrap their sandwiches, and watch the rain fall. Each morning, local children gather beneath its roof, waiting for the school buses to Stokesley or Ingleby Greenhow, their laughter echoing through the valley. Today, it also…
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The Mermaids of Staithes
Staithes clings to the North Yorkshire cliffs like a stubborn barnacle, its narrow alleys and huddled cottages whispering tales of smugglers, storms, and shipwrecks. Once a modest “staith” — a landing place for Seaton, a settlement mentioned in the Domesday Book — the village grew around its tiny harbour, its people as resilient as the…
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Brackenberry Wyke: Low Tide Quarrying
Only when the sea has receded at low tide can one safely pick a path along the foot of the cliffs at Brackenberry Wyke. Here lie the ghostly remains of the old ironstone workings, where men once hacked at the exposed seams before hauling their spoil through an adit to join the great warren of…
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Breck House and an Athletic John Brown
A blocked road just north of Helmsley forced us into a long and meandering detour on our way to Bonfield Ghyll. Still, it offered the consolation of fresh glimpses of familiar country. This is Breck House in upper Bransdale, a solid stone-built Moors farmhouse dating to after 1850. Yet an estate survey from 1782 records…