Tag: history
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Pirates, Sugar and Stone: The Carlton Bank Alum Works
Some industrial stories begin with a balance sheet. This one begins with a privateer’s cannon. The alum works at Carlton Bank, gorged out of the Cleveland Hills, has a history that stretches from the Caribbean to the Cleveland coast. It is, when you look closely, a rather splendid tale of sea dogs, sugar barons, and…
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Egglestone Abbey— The Poorest House in England
Just under two miles south-east of Barnard Castle, the remains of Egglestone Abbey stand above the south bank of the Tees. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, rather good. Egglestone was a Premonstratensian house, founded around 1195. The Premonstratensians — known as the White Canons — were ordained priests who…
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Providence Smelting Mill – Lead, Sweat and and 200 Years of Silence
The arch in this image above has stood on this windswept Yorkshire moor for over two hundred years. It is now the most eye-catching feature in this otherwise barren valley. Near Greenhow, west of Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale, the ground holds centuries of industrial history just beneath the surface. In 1840, Michael Colling, agent to…
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The Prosperous Smelt Mill
These crumbling stone walls tell quite a story. Standing at the foot of a bracken-covered hillside near Pateley Bridge, the ruins of the Prosperous smelt mill look like something from a forgotten world. They are, rather fittingly, exactly that. Lead was probably first mined here by the Romans. The first written record dates from 1781.…
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The Smell of Progress
A lone tractor crawls below Roseberry Topping, spreading muck across an upland field. The scent hits you before the sight does. This, believe it or not, is what civilisation smells like. That machine is just the latest chapter in a very old and very smelly story. Centuries of farmers knew something we have mostly forgotten:…
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Not Guilty: The Carlton Bank Case, 1972
Carlton Bank. Even on a dreich day there was a surprising number of folk around. Yet, in May 1972, it was the scene of one of the more extraordinary legal cases the North Riding has ever seen. A potato merchant named Kenneth Saddington drove five miles up to these moors one Saturday night with a…
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Dale Head—Fire, Rumour and a Long Silence
Ryedale demanded a break. The old Stephen Thwaite farmstead has an irresistible collection of “stoups” and “hemmells” worth ten minutes of any cyclist’s time. Then the sun did what the sun does when it wants to make a point. It threw a spotlight clean across Wheat Beck and landed it squarely on Dale Head House.…
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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…