Tag: history
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The Priory Gatehouse: Overshadowed but Not Forgotten
I had reason to visit Guisborough today and took the chance to walk around the old priory. I have posted before of its great east wallāimpressive as it is, it remains only a fragment of what must once have been a formidable complex. The priory met its end in 1540 with the Dissolution. Ten years…
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The Battle for the Barrows
In a tide of encroaching bracken, a few exposed stones on a low rise suggest something hidden just beneath the heather. I am standing on a Round Barrowāone of four, perhaps fiveāin what was once a Bronze Age cemetery. These circular burial mounds, called barrows or cairns when built of stone, are the most common…
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A Hidden Hollow-Way on Coleson Bank
This morningās constitutional threw up a surprise. I have used the so-called āGreen Laneā on Coleson Bank before, climbing out of Battersby, and even posted about it. You can just make out a glimpse of it in the photo. But I do not go that way often. The narrow gulley attracts off-road motorbikes, which makes…
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Where the Sheep Went Swimming
Sheepwash, ever the draw for Teessideās day-trippers, earned its name in the most literal way. It was once a place where sheep were hauled into the cold beck and scrubbed clean before shearing. Until the early twentieth century, many farmers still followed the old habit. The idea was to coax new wool to rise from…
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A Lost Boundary Stone of Easby
Out on the moors, boundary stones are everywhere. In the Vale of Cleveland, though, they are relatively rare. I had driven past this one for nearly fifty years before noticing it properly. That only happened last year, when two men were working beside it. I assumed they were putting up a rustic farm sign and…
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1772: A Path, A Stone, A Hanging
The so-called āMinersā Trodā, with Cold Moor rising beyond it, cuts a broad, unsightly scar along the hillside courtesy of the forestry workers. The pathās name comes from the nineteenth-century jet-miners, though it is unlikely they were its first users. That large boulder to the left bears the date ā1772ā and a scatter of initials,…
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Foxgloves and Stone
The bright purple foxgloves inject a sharp burst of summer colour into this view of Roseberry Topping, the conical shape of which remains instantly recognisable even from its backside. The rough dry-stone wall that cuts across the scene, adds texture and, for me, some interest. Yesterday I was out on the coast with the National…
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The Black Gold of Far Jetticks
A sheer cliff edge north of Robin Hoodās Bay gives a sweeping view of the Yorkshire Coast, where rock and industry meet. This coastline is now known more for its beauty than for what has been pulled from beneath it: ironstone, alum shale, jet, coal, sandstone, cementstone. Today, the prize is potash and polyhalite, mined…
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DĆ¹n VĆ¹lan
This was an unexpected discovery on South Uist, though the Gothic lettering on the map did hint at something worth noting. Rubha Ćird Mhuile is a low, sandy peninsula that juts into the Atlantic. Most of it is taken up by a shallow āinlandā loch. On the summit of a storm-thrown shingle ridge, barely ten…
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Departing the Hebrides, Not Quite Yet
That is it. The Hebridean escape has come to an end. But while I drag myself back into a Yorkshire frame of mind, I can still make use of the heap of photos that never made it into the daily posts. This one shows the summit of Hacklett Uachdar, a rocky rise on the southern…