Tag: history
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The Bridge of Alvah and the Legend of James MacPherson
The Bridge of Alvah, spanning the gorge of the River Deveron. This crossing was built almost one hundred years after James MacPherson is said to have lept across it. MacPherson was a fiddler, a fighter, and a thorn in the side of every laird from Elgin to Keith. Born the illegitimate son of the Laird…
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Gardenstown
Gardenstown clings to the cliffs between Macduff and Fraserburgh, a proper cling too, as if it might slide into the sea on a bad day. Alexander Garden of Troup founded it in 1720, and yet hardly anyone calls it Gardenstown at all. Locals stick with Gamrie, the old parish name, borrowed straight from the bay…
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Rattray Head
I know the name from the Shipping Forecast, tucked between Cape Wrath and Berwick-upon-Tweed, and yet I have never set foot here. Odd, that. A name can live in your head for years before the place ever does. The Aberdeenshire coast does not do gentle. Gurly rocks and cliffs run for miles, broken here and…
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St Ninian’s Eco-Leisure and Wellness Park
Every summer for close on thirty years we have travelled north on the M90 past a mighty scar of an opencast coal mine. I have no early memories of it; my eyes must have been blind to the ugliness. Ten years or so ago it began to be transformed into a country park of sorts.…
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Almscliff Crag, standing guard over Wharfedale
Rock climbers know it for routes with names like Megadoom and Wall of Horrors. Locals in August 1939 knew it for something rather more thrilling: espionage. Three men with foreign accents were spotted near the Crag. Naturally, panic set in. That evening, a flashing light was seen from the summit, and every good Yorkshireman drew…
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Quakers’ Causeway
Stanghow Moor has not seen my studs in years, and it is easy to see why. It sits west of Birk Brow, bleak and boggy as you like, with barely a path or sheep trod worth the name cut through it. I can’t believe I used to run over this stuff. One path does buck…
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1953: The Moors Were Burning Then, Too
Moorland fires have a way of making headlines only for as long as the ground stays dry. This summer’s blazes filled the news for weeks, and then some rain came and the story simply went quiet, whether that counts as relief or amnesia is anyone’s guess. What follows is an article from the Cleveland Standard,…
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Stagnant Ponds No More
Moorsholm Docks do not often see me cycling past, which is a shame, since the place has a story worth telling more than once. These six sunken sandstone troughs sit along the High Street of a village that could not look more like a postcard if it tried. This time round, a collared dove stood…
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Cattersty Cliffs, Not Quite Jurassic
Ironstone was found at Skinningrove in 1847, and the Cleveland coast has not looked back since. By 1874 the Loftus Iron Company had two blast furnaces lit and roaring above the village, built on land leased from the Maynard estate. Boom turned to bust within three years. The company went under, sold at auction in…
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Rosedale Wyke and the View Towards Kettleness Point
That distinctive headland on the horizon, Kettleness Point, has swallowed ships the way other coastlines swallow litter. Four of them tell you all you need to know about the sea’s manners, which is to say it has none. Take the Viola, a 1,900-ton steamer bound from Spain to Middleborough with iron ore. Thick fog rolled…