#northyorkmoors — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #northyorkmoors, aggregated by home.social.
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Patches of purple heather just down from Easy Moor, looking across Cockshaw Hill to the profile of Roseberry Topping, near Great Ayton in North Yorkshire.
The distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, lends itself to being compared with the much higher Matterhorn in the Swiss-Italian Alps.
However, with a height of 1,049 feet (320 m), Roseberry Topping is but a bump in the landscape compared against the real thing whose summit soars to 14,692 ft (4,478 m).
The countryside just now reflecting the season of summer beginning to wind down, making way for autumn arriving in just over a week.
Great views from up here on a clear day making it definitely worth while bring the binoculars (and a camera!).
#england #yorkshire #northyorkmoors #greatayton #summer #september #landscape #photography -
Patches of purple heather just down from Easy Moor, looking across Cockshaw Hill to the profile of Roseberry Topping, near Great Ayton in North Yorkshire.
The distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, lends itself to being compared with the much higher Matterhorn in the Swiss-Italian Alps.
However, with a height of 1,049 feet (320 m), Roseberry Topping is but a bump in the landscape compared against the real thing whose summit soars to 14,692 ft (4,478 m).
The countryside just now reflecting the season of summer beginning to wind down, making way for autumn arriving in just over a week.
Great views from up here on a clear day making it definitely worth while bring the binoculars (and a camera!).
#england #yorkshire #northyorkmoors #greatayton #summer #september #landscape #photography -
Patches of purple heather just down from Easy Moor, looking across Cockshaw Hill to the profile of Roseberry Topping, near Great Ayton in North Yorkshire.
The distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, lends itself to being compared with the much higher Matterhorn in the Swiss-Italian Alps.
However, with a height of 1,049 feet (320 m), Roseberry Topping is but a bump in the landscape compared against the real thing whose summit soars to 14,692 ft (4,478 m).
The countryside just now reflecting the season of summer beginning to wind down, making way for autumn arriving in just over a week.
Great views from up here on a clear day making it definitely worth while bring the binoculars (and a camera!).
#england #yorkshire #northyorkmoors #greatayton #summer #september #landscape #photography -
Patches of purple heather just down from Easy Moor, looking across Cockshaw Hill to the profile of Roseberry Topping, near Great Ayton in North Yorkshire.
The distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, lends itself to being compared with the much higher Matterhorn in the Swiss-Italian Alps.
However, with a height of 1,049 feet (320 m), Roseberry Topping is but a bump in the landscape compared against the real thing whose summit soars to 14,692 ft (4,478 m).
The countryside just now reflecting the season of summer beginning to wind down, making way for autumn arriving in just over a week.
Great views from up here on a clear day making it definitely worth while bring the binoculars (and a camera!).
#england #yorkshire #northyorkmoors #greatayton #summer #september #landscape #photography -
Patches of purple heather just down from Easy Moor, looking across Cockshaw Hill to the profile of Roseberry Topping, near Great Ayton in North Yorkshire.
The distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, lends itself to being compared with the much higher Matterhorn in the Swiss-Italian Alps.
However, with a height of 1,049 feet (320 m), Roseberry Topping is but a bump in the landscape compared against the real thing whose summit soars to 14,692 ft (4,478 m).
The countryside just now reflecting the season of summer beginning to wind down, making way for autumn arriving in just over a week.
Great views from up here on a clear day making it definitely worth while bring the binoculars (and a camera!).
#england #yorkshire #northyorkmoors #greatayton #summer #september #landscape #photography -
Who Gets the Land? Everyone Wants a Piece
Britain has a land problem. There is not enough of it, what there is in the wrong place, and far too many people want it for far too many things — housing, food, energy, nature, and apparently shooting birds for fun. The Government has finally noticed and published its first Land Use Framework: a long-term plan to stop ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/23/who-gets-the-land-everyone-wants-a-piece/
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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 ...http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/08/dale-head-fire-rumour-and-a-long-silence/
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Gribdale Gate and the Edge of the Ice
A view from Cliff Rigg looking across to Gribdale Gate and Easby Moor, where the monument to Captain James Cook stands like a stubborn finger pointing at the sky. It is a landscape that seems quiet until you realise how much has happened here while human ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/24/gribdale-gate-and-the-edge-of-the-ice/
#CaptCooksMonument #ClevelandHills #CliffRigg #EasbyMoor #Gribdale #NorthYorkMoors #geological #history #prehistoric
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Grief with a Power Tool
In medieval churches, the pauper’s voice often survives with their graffiti remembering loved-ones on the walls and pews — essential memorials for the 95% of society who couldn’t afford headstones. Today, this vernacular memorialisation has turned toxic. In the North York Moors beneath the monument to Capt. Cook, a sandstone crag—naturally beautiful ...
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Nature’s Invitation, Authority’s Refusal
It may have been a cold walk around Cod Beck Reservoir today, but imagine it is hot. The height of the summer. You are with friends. A dull sign saying “No Swimming” stands between you and a better afternoon. Many people have stared down that sort of sign and decided it probably does not apply today. Usually nothing happens ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/25/natures-invitation-authoritys-refusal/
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Chalybeate Dreams and Murky Realities
The orange colouring of this stream is a clear sign of iron salts in abundance. This is known as chalybeate or ferruginous water, a substance once held in high esteem in the 17th century when mineral waters were treated as a cure for most known ailments and several imaginary ones besides. People drank it with conviction and ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/15/chalybeate-dreams-and-murky-realities/
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The Lady Chapel
The precise beginnings of this agreeable little chapel tucked into the trees are lost to time, which is how such places like it. What we do know is that by 1397 a licence had been granted for Mass to be said here, neatly separating it from the later Mount Grace Priory, the Carthusian house nearby. A year later the land and chapel were handed over to the Priory’s founders. T ...
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Solstice Greetings from Oakdale
Forty years ago, sending and receiving Christmas cards felt like a rite of passage, a quiet signal that one had stepped into adulthood and set up house. Some even embraced the annual letter, chronicling the family triumphs and tribulations for distant friends and relatives. We never warmed to the round-robin missive that trumpeted life’s succ ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/12/solstice-greetings-from-oakdale/
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Snow on the Ruins of Cote Garth
The ruined farms hidden beneath the forestry east of Cod Beck Reservoir sit like half-forgotten whispers of a tougher age. Among them, Cote Garth stands out, its broken walls sharp against the last scraps of the recent snowfall, as though the land itself is determined to remind us that someone once fought wind, rain and isolation to m ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/21/snow-on-the-ruins-of-cote-garth/
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The Forgotten Lichenologist of Great Ayton: William Mudd
Watching over this popular approach to Easby Moor stand a pair of weathered gateposts, their stone faces mottled with centuries of lichen. They guard the path with the weary dignity of old sentinels, and one cannot help but wonder: did they stand here before Captain ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/04/the-forgotten-lichenologist-of-great-ayton-william-mudd/
#CaptCooksMonument #EasbyMoor #GreatAyton #NorthYorkMoors #history
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Hobthrush Hall
High above the village of Over Silton, recent felling has exposed cliffs that rear up like the broken ramparts of some forgotten fortress, appropriately named The Scarrs. Here lies a cleft in the rock known as Hobthrush Hall. The locals call it a cave, though it feels more like the scar of something ancient and unsettled. Once, so they say, it was home to a gobli ...
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Osmotherley Moor: Sheep, Turf and Shooting Rights
Dramatic skies hang over Black Hambleton, its summit almost clear of cloud. The view is from Solomon’s Lane, a grand name for a track that no longer exists. The surrounding expanse is Osmotherley Moor, part of which is “waste land of the manor,” now the subject of an application by the Open Spa ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/28/osmotherley-moor-sheep-turf-and-shooting-rights/
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Swifts on Roseberry, Silence on Easby Moor
It has been a while since I last stood on Roseberry, looking down on clouds. And even longer since I came up here on a Saturday. Most seemed to have taken the yellow thunderstorm warning as a cue to stay indoors. Easby Moor, with its pointed monument to Captain Cook, rose clean above the mist.
...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/19/swifts-on-roseberry-silence-on-easby-moor/
#CaptCooksMonument #EasbyMoor #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping
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Obelisks and Obfuscation: Rethinking Cook’s Monument
Three heavily-laden walkers trudge away from Captain Cook’s Monument towards Gribdale. One of them had, moments earlier, stood on the railings and appeared to kiss the obelisk. Quite what prompted this act of reverence is unclear, but it brought to mind an article I once ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/06/23/obelisks-and-obfuscation-rethinking-cooks-monument/
#CaptCooksMonument #EasbyMoor #NorthYorkMoors #CaptJamesCook #history
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Where the Sheep Went Swimming
Sheepwash, ever the draw for Teesside’s 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 the skin, making the flee ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/06/17/where-the-sheep-went-swimming/
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Sir George the Dragon Slayer
A picturesque bank of cloud hung over the Cleveland Hills this St. George’s Day morning. A reminder that even the sky can be more subtle than patriotic flag-wavers.
St. George’s Day stirs about as much feeling in me as Carlin Sunday, Plough Monday or Hocktide – curious relics of a myth-soaked past, clung to by those desperate to feel part o ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/23/sir-george-the-dragon-slayer/
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A Stone that Once Mattered — A Forgotten Boundary
A low-angle view of a nondescript triangular stone, half-buried in a bleak expanse of dry, brown heather. The pale sandstone stands out against the darker, tangled vegetation, with the occasional patch of golden rushes breaking the monotony. In the distance, the low hi ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/03/21/a-stone-that-once-mattered-a-forgotten-boundary/
#CaptCooksMonument #EasbyMoor #Kildale #NorthYorkMoors #neolithic #Prehistory
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A Red Grouse, the Civil War, and Pennyman‘s Delinquency
This Red Grouse, clearly unimpressed by my presence, stood its ground clucking defiantly as I trudged up Easby Moor. Its red wattle gave away its gender, maybe it was trying to attract a mate. Back in the 17th century, grouse would not have been hunted to the same extent as today but still might have made a convenient snack for any troops trudging ...
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The Light: Conspiracy Bile Delivered Direct to Your Letterbox
There I was, about to embark on my virtuous trek up Roseberry Topping, coat in hand, when a free newspaper crashed through the letterbox like an unwelcome guest. A relic of a bygone era, I thought, since such things had ceased to grace my street years ago. Still, the design carried a whiff of credibility, enough to spark curiosity. A quick ...
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The Beck, the Inn, and the Blizzard: Histories of Slape Stones
I quite like this photo. It captures the sweeping valley of Slape Stones Beck, leading—predictably enough—to the hamlet of Slape Stones. The scene positively drips with tranquillity, and after the boisterous festive season perhaps a reminder to pause and simply be. How very profound.
The name Slape Stones, unlike the beck, has fallen out of fas ...
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Clouds over the North Sea
Ah, another crisp, cold morning with a blue sky. The sun, though, seemed to be having a leisurely lie-in. The reason all became clear atop Capt. Cook’s Monument. A bank of cumulus cloud hovered menacingly over the North Sea—not the friendly fair weather sort, mind you, but cumulus congestus, puffed up and self-important, like galleons scudding the skies. A storm brewi ...
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Cod Beck Reservoir: The Calm Before the Chaos
Ah, the poetic serenity of dawn at Cod Beck Reservoir—a perfect place for nature’s calm to lull you into a false sense of security. Mist drapes over the water as greylag geese glide serenely, trees half-hidden in fog add a touch of mystery, and a skeletal Goat Willow, I’m guessing here, stands at the water’s edge. Truly idyllic, if only we weren’t on the brink of ...
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The Rise and Fall of Cod Beck Reservoir
Given the recent weather, I was quite taken aback to find Cod Beck Reservoir so low, although this is by no means unprecedented. I have a sneaking suspicion that Yorkshire Water has intentionally carried out a water release, perhaps as part of a scour test or some other enigmatic plan. I’ll resist from drawing any parallels with the act of flushing a lavato ...
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Osmotherley Show, Thimbleby Hall and the Barwick Lineage
Among my most popular posts this year is 'From Barbados to Morrisons—The history of Thimbleby and its owners.' An observant reader noted that I had overlooked a significant chapter in this chronicle.Today, Thimbleby Hall opened its grounds for the Osmotherley Show, allowing the fell race to Black Hambleton and back. And an opportunity for ...
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The Tory Party, 1832-2024
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of the Tory Party, beloved overlord, on 5 July 2024 after a long and terminal decline.
The Conservative and Unionist Party was founded in 1832 from an alliance between the Tory and Whig parties to defend the existing order against radical reform. Once widely respected, the party adapted to changes it originally opposed, ult ... -
Capt. Cook’s Monument
The obelisk to Captain James Cook on Easby Moor, a familiar sight from the Cleveland plain. Cook is a local hero. We all know of his epic voyages to the Pacific, they are taught in schools, but his legacy is being reassessed as we look at events at that time through 21st century eyes.
Cook's official reason for leading his first voyage on the Endeavour was to travel to Tahi ...
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Ghosts on the Hambleton Road — Echoes of Drovers and a Lost Farmstead
High Mossy Grange, just off High Lane, that's the local name for this section of Hambleton Road, an ancient route snaking from the southern reaches of England to bonny Scotland. Used to be a post-medieval farmstead, but now High Mossy Grange has all but been wiped off the map. What's left is this patch of unr ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=34783
#NorthYorkMoors #Osmotherley #DroversRoad #Droving #HambletonStreet
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From a Scenic View to Deadly Plots: The Cato Street Conspiracy
On the parish boundary between Easby and Kildale, looking through the self-seeded birch wood toward Ward Nab, a sandstone outcrop the origin of which name escapes my grasp. Therefore, I must lean on hodiurnal past happenings for the rest of this post.
In the tumultuous throes of economic strife and political unrest in the early 19th century, ...
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Easby Moor from Roseberry Topping
The names Easby and Roseberry both derive from Old Scandinavian, but what did the Deiri tribe, nestled snugly between the Humber and the Tees rivers, call these places? Picture Deira as the precursor to Yorkshire, holding court in York.
But Deira wasn't a territorial area. It seems more like a robust dynasty. The exact genesis of this lineage has been lost ...
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Yat stoops on Easby Bank
On a morning with ever-changing atmospheric conditions, I found myself in pursuit of that elusive sun. The weather played tricks, switching between drizzle and dullness one moment, and dazzling sunlight accompanied by rainbows the next. Thus, an opportunistic approach in selecting a photograph for today's posting.
This pair of 'yat stoops' located on Easby Bank has app ...
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Hogmena
Captain Cook's Monument was busy this morning. Plenty of folk working up an appetite for their Christmas Dinner. Me, I dropped down the slope a bit and played with my pareidolia.
I always believed hogmanay is the name for the New Year celebrations in Scotland, yet it transpires that a related term had found currency south of the border. An excerpt from John Trotter Brockett's ostentatiously titled ...
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Christmas Contemplations
On this eve of Christmas Day, I found myself deep in thought. It seems a mere five minutes since last year. Maybe it's just because of that old chestnut: "time flies when you're having fun." Each morning I do wake up excited as to what adventures the day will bring.
Dopamines, those pleasure-inducing chemicals, supposedly interfere with our internal ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=34045
#CliffRigg #EasbyMoor #EasbyMoor #Gribdale #Gribdale #NorthYorkMoors
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Inversion Intricacy — The Cleveland Hills from Easby Moor
We left the village this morning, enveloped in a thick fog, anticipating its prompt dispersal under the forecasted sunshine. Soon, intermittent patches of blue sky overhead began to play a fickle game. Only as we finally ascended through the murky haze to Easby Moor at 324 metres asl., we found ourselves above the clouds, affordi ...
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Remembrance Sunday on Easby Moor
On Remembrance Sunday, a brisk stomp picking up the memorial on Easby Moor for the solemn service by the Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team has become an unspoken tradition. A simple plaque there pays tribute to the unfortunate crew aboard a Hudson airplane, their three lives ending on a bitter February morning in 1940.
They had embarked from Thornaby airfield at an ...
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Smouts and Smeuses — A Cleveland Lexicon
Odd features of the landscape have always captivated my interest, though more often than not they tend to slip my mind upon returning home, overshadowed by more pressing matters.
One of these curiosities is this kink in the dry-stone wall below Easby Moor. It's almost as if two builders constructing the wall from opposite ends suddenly realised their walls wouldn ...
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Heather’s Purple Dance with Golden Grass
Apart from the swathes of purple heather, there is another colour that resonates with me and epitomises the moors at this time of the year: the golden brown of grasses. These strands of gold flourish abundantly upon the ancient swiddens, gently swaying in the breeze and contrasting with the purple that's nothing short of mesmerising. My inclination is ...
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#Osmotherley: a village on the #NorthYorkMoors. Exposed and picturesque, with the dry conditions, this view has a Southern European vibe. Market cross, mill workers' cottages, flax mill turned hostel, and a Methodist Chapel with historical significance. John Wesley preached here.
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=32510 -
The Local Legacy of Capt. James Cook
Well, it's been a quite a while since I last posted a photo of that obelisk known as Capt. Cook's Monument, perched ever so ostentatiously upon Easby Moor. A tribute it is to that infamous chap, Captain James Cook, the problematic "discoverer" of Australia, who hailed from the local village of Great Ayton during his youth.
Now, this monumental structu ...
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The forgotten High Dam at Cod Beck
In August 2021, in the aftermath of the Covid rules, I went on a guided walk led by a local historian to explore the history of Scarth Wood Moor. During the walk, the historian mentioned that the High Dam at Cod Beck had burst in 1857. According to my notes, a local farmer noticed the leakage and immediately ran to the mill to warn its occupants.
Before the ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=32042
#NorthYorkMoors #Osmotherley #19th-century #history
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Miley Pike
Miley Pike is a type of prehistoric round burial mound that was built during the Late Neolithic period to the Late Bronze Age. These mounds are located in important positions throughout the North York Moors and are an important part of the area's historical landscape.
Round barrows are ancient monuments that were used for burials. Miley Pike is a specific roun ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31852
#NorthYorkMoors #Osmotherley #Snilesworth #history #medieval #prehistoric
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Winter’s last stand?
The brief return to Winter didn’t last long, but the last stubborn snow patches are hanging on for dear life on the fields of Aireyholme. But Roseberry Topping’s sandstone cap is clear, anxious to let go of winter fashion.
Ah, Roseberry Topping, the hill that thinks it's a volcano. With its unique shape, it's the diva of the Cleveland hills, always demanding attenti ... -
With a teachers’ strike likely, it seems timely to point out that exactly 50 years ago today teachers resumed their normal working after a three-month work-to-rule dispute with the local authority
On this day in 1973, the Daily Mirror published interviews with some Teesside pupils:
HILARY COX, age 13: "It's rotten, it's boring, and my Mam says she's sick of me ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31299
#Capt.Cook'sMonument #EasbyMoor #NorthYorkMoors #CaptainJamesCook #OnThisDay #OTD
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Recent deforestation of Thimberby bank has unveiled stunning vistas of the Vale of Mowbray
To the north, the honeypot village of Osmotherley, lies snuggly between the Hambleton Hills and the Cleveland Hills.
The name, Osmotherley, is derived from 'ley', a clearing, belonging to 'Asmund' or 'Osmund'. Its title was recorded in the Domesday Book as 'Asmundrelac', before being ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31228
#ClevelandHills #HambletonHills #NorthYorkMoors #Osmotherley #etymology
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Cod Beck Reservoir — a view from Swinestye lane
Opened in 1953, the 115 million gallon reservoir has grown in popularity since it was first opened to the public in 1989 after Yorkshire Water was privatised.
The surrounding woodland, planted soon afterwards, is now being cleared, and it won't be too long before the ruins of the two old farms once again see the sunlight.
One of these has the unusual na ...
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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 t ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31002
#Capt.Cook'sMonument #EasbyMoor #NorthYorkMoors #CaptainJamesCook #Cleopatra'sNeedle #JohnDixon