Category: Yorkshire Dales
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Boxer Peacock’s Cottage, Arkengarthdale
Another post from last Thursday’s jaunt from Arkengarthdale, when I walked straight past one of the curiosities in the dale. On the track up from Fremington, I spotted what looked like a broken bit of Victorian drainpipe stuck in the bank, overflowing with water. I gave it barely a glance and walked on. Fool. Back…
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Wall’s End, Calver Hill
Yesterday’s walk in Swaledale served up the full British weather menu — mist, mystery and a fleeting glimpse of actual sunshine. Climbing out of Reeth up Arkengarthdale, we broke above the clouds into glorious blue skies. Descending Calver Hill, the mist swallowed us whole again. As it does. Then this wall appeared from nowhere. A…
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Fremington Edge Chert: The Stone That Made Your Teacup
A view from Reeth Low Moor looking across at the scars gouged onto Fremington Edge. Those wounds in this hillside are not the work of nature. They are what happens when industry decides it needs something badly enough. Chert quarrying in Swaledale ran from around 1900 to approximately 1950, driven almost entirely by the pottery…
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Barningham Moor
Barningham Moor lies high in the Northern Dales between the Swale and the Tees, a stretch of upland that most travellers notice only as a vague rise on the horizon while speeding along the A66. I have passed it for years without realising there was anything remarkable up there at all. From its upper slopes,…
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How Hush: A Gorge Carved by Water and Industry
Another glimpse from Thursday’s wander through Swaledale: this is How Hush, a scar across the hills carved not by nature but by centuries of lead mining. Lead was likely valued here long before history began to take notes. The vast Grinton–Fremington dykes, which probably marked prehistoric tribal boundaries, bear silent witness to early human presence…
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Grinton Smelting Mill
Grinton Smelting Mill is one of the best-preserved lead mills in the Yorkshire Dales. It sits in Cogden Gill, just south of Grinton village, at the confluence of two becks. The site offered water, level ground, and easy access to ore. One of the becks had to be diverted, culverted and partly covered to make…
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Beldi Hill Smelt Mill
Following my exhausting cycle ride around Swaledale yesterday, I wisely opted not to stray far today. So instead, here is another photograph from that trip. I was aware of Swaledale’s lead mining legacy, but stumbling upon this particular site was an unexpected delight. The Beldi Hill Smelt Mill sits awkwardly wedged into the hillside, just…
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Thwaite’s Gift to the Natural World: The Lives of the Kearton Brothers
A typical Swaledale landscape: stone-built cottages in Thwaite and those endlessly fascinating dry-stone walls dissecting the surrounding fields. Many of the walls date from the 18th century, but, alas, there is the obligatory parked car ruining the scene. Otherwise, one imagines this view would be instantly familiar to Thwaite’s greatest sons, Richard and Cherry Kearton.…
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Reeth Revisited—Memories of the Aftermath of the 2019 Flood
A day in Swaledale, that picturesque valley of the Yorkshire Dales, seemed promising enough, though the weather was somewhat overcast. I climbed High Harker Hill, naturally, as one does, to gain some view of the world. But coming down, there was that undeniable charm of Reeth—a place name clinging on to its roots with a…
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Save our Swale
The River Swale, the heart and namesake of the environmental group “Save our Swale,” stands as a poignant battleground against the alarming increase in raw sewage discharged into our waters. This group ardently contends that Yorkshire Water prioritises profit over people and the environment, neglecting the much-needed investment in modernising the antiquated sewage infrastructure. Recent…