Category: Roseberry Topping
-
Furze: Fodder, Folklore, and the Smell of Coconut
A sudden change in the weather, as if the sky has grown bored. No more sun-drenched optimism; just a grey sheet of disinterest overhead. Still, Roseberry manages to look charming, despite being surpassed by the only plant capable of making scrubland smell like a tropical cocktail â gorse. Its yellow blooms, reeking of coconut and…
-
Cleveland: A County No One Wanted
All Foolsâ Day 1974âthe perfect occasion for bureaucratic tomfoolery. On this particular day, the North Riding of Yorkshire relinquished half of Roseberry Topping to the nascent âCounty of Cleveland.â A curious choice of name, given that âClevelandâ means âhilly landâ in Old English, whereas this new county was largely flat. Nonetheless, the boundary was drawn,…
-
An Abandoned Stone Quarry on Ayton Bank
Someone once told me, or perhaps I read it somewhere, that there were twelve quarries along the edge of the escarpment between Roseberry Topping and Easby Moor, including the one on the summit itself. Do not expect a citation; it is just one of those pointless facts that have lodged themselves in my brain, refusing…
-
A Nisly Day over Aireyholme
An old book of weather proverbs I have offers an array of predictions for March, ensuring that, whatever the weather, one can always find something vaguely reassuring within its pages. One such gem is a French proverb: âWhen March is like April, April will be like March.â How profound. The notion of âApril showersâ stems…
-
Family Farms or Tax Havens? The Debate Over Farmland Inheritance
A picturesque view of Roseberry looming over the Cleveland Vale, a landscape dotted with the usual mix of arable and livestock farming. A typical lowland farm grows wheat, barley, and oilseed rape while also rearing cattle and sheep. These farms are mostly family-run or tenanted, though one suspects that âfamily-runâ has a rather flexible definition…
-
Roseberry Topping and the Lingering Trace of a Railway
A view of Roseberry Topping that will be familiar to anyone enduring the A173. A fleeting moment of brightness in an otherwise wet and windy day spent planting trees in Bransdale. Of mild interest here is the embankment, now smothered in yellow-flowering gorse and lined with skeletal silver birch trees. This was once a curving…
-
4th February, 1921: Redundancies at Roseberry Ironstone Mine
His day began long before any sensible person would even consider waking. At 4:30 in the morning, he and his wife dragged themselves from their bed, greeted not by comfort but by the biting cold. The morningâs first ordeal was the outhouseâan unenviable journey in deep winter, where snow, ice, and the ever-present risk of…
-
Slippery Paths and Roseberryâs Summerhouse
A supposedly âgentlerâ path to the top of Roseberry Topping winds up the southern side from the Summerhouse Field. After last nightâs heavy rain, the path has become a veritable death trap, with these walkers wisely prefering the rough grass for better footing. Ascending it is manageable, but descending? Practically suicidal. Avoiding the path might…
-
Burns Night: Tartan, Haggis, and a Global Legacy
Ah, Burnâs Night, that annual spectacle of tartan-wrapped sentimentality when the Scots remind everyone of their heritage. Beyond haggis, neeps, and tatties, there is, of course, The Address itself: Fair faâ your honest, sonsie face, Great Chieftain oâ the Puddin-race! Perhaps not Robert Burnsâs maximum opus for surely that superlative must go to âAuld Lang…
-
Cleopatraâs Needle and its Tenuous Connection to the North Riding
Let us journey back to this day, 21st January in 1878, to Gravesend, Kent. Imagine the children, thrilled to avoid school, lining the Thames estuary to witness the grand arrival of Cleopatraâs Needle. This 3,500-year-old, 224-ton, 21-metre-high granite obelisk had been towed from Alexandria to London in a cumbersome iron vessel shaped like a cylinder.…