Tag: history
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Causey Arch
Prior to the late 17th-century, transportation of materials across the country was slow and difficult. Either by horse drawn carts or teams of ponies. More forward thinking industrialists were developing wagon-ways, horse-drawn first with wooden rails and rollers, then with flanged iron wheels. In the 1720s, when coal-owners were considering exploiting the coal fields below…
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Roseberry from Carr Ridge
It seems a bit of a waste. Posting a distant photo of my local hill. I had planned a wander over Urra Moor. A dull start but I could see this patch of sunlight slowly making its way over the Eston Hills. I figured sooner or later it would shine on Roseberry. I wasn’t disappointed.…
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Cod Beck Reservoir
The head of the reservoir in the Sheep Wash valley captures the low-lying November sun. Cod Beck Reservoir was opened in 1953 for the Northallerton and District Water Board, but one had actually been mooted in the 19th-century as part of a proposed scheme by the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees. In the Parliamentary session for 1869,…
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How York paid its MP’s
The autumnal colours of Kildale Wood are overpowering. Just the other day, I pulled up a page from an 1889 edition of the York Herald for a completely unrelated subject, when I noticed the headline in the next column: — HOW YORK PAID ITS M.P’s. It was just a short piece, a letter I think…
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The Tragedy of the Commons
Aireyholme was once the common pasture for the parish of Great Ayton. Parishioners had various rights on the land. Usually this would include the right right to pasture cattle, but Common Land may include other rights such as collecting wood, piscary, the right to fish and turbery, the right to cut turves of peat for…
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Westerdale Hall
Originally built as a shooting lodge by Colonel Duncombe in the “Baronial Tudor style”, sometime before 1874, between 1946 and 1992, Westerdale Hall was a youth hostel but now it is a private residence. Today, the hall is largely hidden, surrounded by mature trees, but would, in its day, have commanded good views over the…
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Scarth Wood Moor
Another one of those local tales. I was told by an Osmotherley resident a few months ago, that this gulley, about 3 metres long and a metre or so deep, was used for rifle practice by a “home guard” unit during WW1. Now I’m not sure if there was a home guard during that war.…
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Ardenside
I came across a rather poignant tale the other day. It concerned William Wass of Ardenside who was called up to fight in the Crimean War. Now one way of escaping the call up apparently was to get someone else to go in your place and so Wass persuaded his friend, John Barr, who subsequently…
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Castle Hill, Easby
From a distance Castle Hill is barely a ripple on the flatlands of the Vale of Cleveland. Now dominated by mature trees, it would, in the 12th-century, have commanded fine views and overlooked any movement on the King’s road from Stokesley to Whitby that passed the foot of the eminence on which the castle stood.…
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The day Guisborough led the nation
A view of Highcliff Nab across Bold Venture Gill. This boundary stone is one of a line of marking the former boundary of Guisborough and Hutton Lowcross boundary. It is inscribed ‘T.C. G. 1860’; standing for Thomas Chaloner and Guisborough. But it is his father, Robert Chaloner, I want to write about today. I have…