Tag: monastic
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Kirby Bank — A Hill With a Past
Bluebells pour down the sun-baked flank of Kirby Bank above the plain of Cleveland. Gorse burns yellow across the slopes. Below, the white walls of the Pybus Scout Centre gleam in the spring light. Beyond the green patchwork of fields, Roseberry Topping rises on the far horizon under a sky without a single cloud. A…
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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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An Echo of Grosmont Priory
The Grandmontine Priory of Grosmont was established around 1200 at a site overlooking the River Esk. It was one Joan de Turnham who granted the site to the monks, and according to the deed of gift, a “mansion house” already existed there. Its surrounding fields, covering about 200 acres, were already in cultivation, evidenced by…
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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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A view of Swainby from Scarth Nick …
… but the point of interest is not the village of Swainby, nor the wooded Whorl Hill on the far right. It is the field visible in the between the gap in the treeline on the left. Or more specifically the isolated tree in that field. It is around about here that a stone coffin…