Fhithich

On a drizzly Cold Moor this morning I was reminded of one of Richard Blakeborough’s tales about a witch who lived at Broughton. That’s Great Broughton on the Cleveland plain below, just left of centre. The peak of Roseberry Topping is on the skyline just right of centre. Blakeborough’s story appeared in the Northern Weekly Gazette on 22 March 1902. It was published in two parts, on consecutive…

The story of Cleopatra's Needle journey to Britain.

The well-known monument to Capt. James Cook was erected in 1827. The design of an obelisk has led some to speculate a masonic connection. But the more probable reasoning was that obelisks were simply in vogue. In that year, Dublin had begun its erection of the Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park to commemorate victories by the victories of the Duke of Wellington. And how to take advantage of…

A circular walk from Osmotherley with the intention of having a gander at Nunhouse Farm, the site of a Benedictine nuns priory, just south of the village of Thimbleby.

A circular walk from Osmotherley with the intention of having a gander at Nunhouse Farm, the site of a Benedictine nuns priory, just south of the village of Thimbleby. William Grainge wrote in 1859 of a hidden treasure “At a small farmhouse immediately in the plain below, called Nunhouse, near to Thimbleby Banks, tradition says, there is a bull’s skin full of gold hid in the earth. Would he be a…

“Spare the Trees”

Two facts confront us, and deserve serious consideration. The forest of the world are going just as the coal beneath our feet is going — man is a cooking animal, and must have fuel. In all the great outlets of water floods multiply, and become more and more destructive. We are compelled to ask if there is any necessary, or perhaps, obvious connection between the two facts? Undoubtably there is,…

If you’d have asked me a week or so ago, I would have said a Scud was a Soviet Union designed ballistic missiles used in the Iraq war. I have since learnt that a scud is a glider, a low-level detached, irregular cloud, and an acronym that is too crude for me to repeat here, but something to do with dynamite. This was all prompted by a reader sending to me a copy of THE SAILPLANE AND GLIDER dated…

It’s been a bumper year for all sorts of fruits and berries, and the holly is no exception. I was fascinated by this holly bush on Ryston Bank — the northern slope of Little Roseberry. Its branches are laden with bright red berries. In the distance is the flat topped Bousdale Hill with its fields of snow. While we may not deck our halls with broughs of holly any more, perhaps just sticking up a…

Clear felling on Little Ayton Moor has opened up super views across Great Ayton Moor all the way to Highcliff Nab.

A light overnight snowfall hides the debris from the forestry work. I guess the remainder of the forestry will go in due course. Great Ayton Moor has a wealth of archaeological features which I’ve posted about many times before. A chambered cairn, a cairnfield , an Iron Age enclosure, and numerous tumuli. Elgee thought that these tumuli, or howes, were arranged after stellar constellations, such…

Hagioscope or squint. Pevsner described St. Andrew’s Church at Ingleby Greenhow as “Low, with a squat little bell-turret. The exterior seems unassumingly Georgian. It was in fact almost entirely rebuilt in 1741.“ He goes on to identify various Norman architectual features, a window in the west wall of the bell-turret and some moulding around the priest’s doorway. So there seems to have been some…

With the cloud hiding most signs of modernity — a notable exception being the well-worn paths — I can't help thinking that this a timeless view.

It is certainly a view the young James Cook would have recognised while he lived with his family at Aireyholme Farm. Cook of course would go on to achieve fame with his navigational exploits in the Pacific, beginning with his trip to Tahiti to observe of the Transit of Venus. He left England aboard the HMS Endeavour, on 26 August 1768. On this day that year,  13 December, he had left Rio de…

When King Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries, Whitby Abbey did not escape. Its fixtures and furnishings were all sold off with the funds going into the King’s coffers. The lead on the roof was stripped and used on the nearby St. Mary’s Church which until then had a thatched roof. The bells were sold and ordered to be conveyed by ship to London. On a clear, calm day, crowds…

A day of strange atmospherics.

On this day in 2005, at 0601 in the morning, a huge explosion rocked an oil depot in Buncefield near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was the largest in peacetime Europe and the noise is said to have been heard as far away as the Netherlands. I seem to remember people at work saying they had heard the boom here on Teesside but suspect, as this was a day later, there may have been some spin in…

It is recorded that this standing stone is a “Post Medieval” waymarker. A stone has stood over 450 winters reassuring travellers across the bleak Urra Moor, the highest point of the North York Moors.  The only sound that broke the muffling of the cloud was the frequent ‘go-back, back, back‘ call of the Red grouse celebrating their survival of another year’s shooting season.

Well ok, it was only a smattering, a ‘greymin‘, barely enough to cover the rocks on this Bronze Age tumulus on Great Ayton Moor. ” ‘Twas frost and thro leet wid a o’ greymin snaw“. On my walk up Roseberry through Newton Wood, the feathery pruinescence of the dead bracken fonds meant I was not convinced that any snow had actually fallen, we had just had a heavy frost. They say the Inuit have 50…

Only the ice covered road in the foreground is a give away for the temperature. A brisk day in Bransdale, blue skies and brilliant sunshine. In spite of snow falling overnight on the coastal North York Moors, not a flake had fallen on Blakey Ridge for the drive over. But with snow forecasted in the afternoon, it was an early finish, just making it back over Blakey and down into Westerdale before…

On me bike which meant I had to negotiate Guisborough’s busy town centre!

Surprisingly quiet. The town cross is relatively modern but the steps are worn, perhaps part of the Medieval Market cross although a 17th or 18th century engraving shows circular steps. Perhaps the engraving also shows the town’s bull-ring which was located very near the cross. Yes, bull-baiting was a very popular in this period and most towns had their bull-ring. Guisborough was no exception…

One of the opportunities of winter is the reduction in tree cover

The woodland floor becomes airy and light. New vistas are opened up. Climbing up the steep path from the River Leven through Bleach Mill Intake my interest was piqued by a stack of dressed stones in the defile below. Although I don’t think the stones are in their original position they are evidence of the bleach mill that once occupied this spot prior to it being destroyed in 1840 when heavy…

The talus of sandstone boulders at the foot of Roseberry Topping resulting from the landslip that occured in 1912

A scene of rocky confusion. ‘Talus’ is a strange word. It’s a word I actually find uncomfortable to use, long past its sell-by date. In this context it means the slope of rock debris but an alternative meaning is an anklebone. Each derives from different Latin words. Until 1830 talus was more often referred to as the slope of a military earthwork, but in that year it was first recorded as meaning…