#northyorkmoors — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #northyorkmoors, aggregated by home.social.
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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 hor ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/01/kirby-bank-a-hill-with-a-past/
#Kirby #KirkbyinCleveland #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #18thcentury #alum #history #medieval #monastic
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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 ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/17/pirates-sugar-and-stone-the-carlton-bank-alum-works/
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The Last Trace of Fryup Church
Stonebeck Gate Farm sits quietly in Little Fryup Dale, minding its own business, yet the real story lies in the wall that cuts across the foreground. On the right of the metal gate stands ordinary random-coursed dry-stone walling, the sort seen across these hills without a second glance. To the left, however, the tone changes. S ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/02/22/the-last-trace-of-fryup-church/
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When Eskdale Held Its Breath
A dreich day in Bransdale, so I am clinging to a favourite photo from yesterday, taken high above the clouds under a blue sky. It does the soul some good to watch mist creep up the dale while back home in the Tees valley was wrapped in damp fog like a forgotten parcel, although I did not know that at the time. Nature’s q ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/29/when-eskdale-held-its-breath/
#Eskdale #GreatFryupDale #LittleFryupDale #NorthYorkMoors #glacial
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Little Fryup Dale
Little Fryup Dale on a very dreich day. The cloud lifts its base just enough to show the moors in the distance, a wide sweep of heather and bare earth. Even under this leaden sky it is both beautiful and desolate. It feels unchanged, as if wind and rain have been quietly getting on with the job for a few thousand years and see no reason to stop now.
Hu ...
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1772: A Path, A Stone, A Hanging
The so-called “Miners’ Trod”, with Cold Moor rising beyond it, cuts a broad, unsightly scar along the hillside courtesy of the forestry workers. The path’s name comes from the nineteenth-century jet-miners, though it is unlikely they were its first users. That large boulder to the left bears t ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/06/14/1772-a-path-a-stone-a-hanging/
#ColdMoor #GarfittGap #GreatBroughton #NorthYorkMoors #18thcentury #ClevealndWay #history
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Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War
A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...
#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1
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POW! WHACK! The Circus Returns to Town
On this day in 1966, the campy spectacle of Batman made its debut on American television. Adam West donned the cape, Burt Ward chirped as Robin, and Cesar Romero refused to shave his moustache to play the Joker. Although by the time it hit British screens, I was too old, but I remember it well. It had simplistic morals for children, a relentlessly upbeat the ...
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A spectacular day on the northeastern edge of the North York Moors above Robin Hood's Bay.
Taking in a few decent Bronze Age round barrows and the excellent Standing Stones Rigg/Ramsdale standing stones before dropping down to the coast at Boggle Hole for lovely tea and cake at the Youth Hostel, then along the coast path to Robin Hood's Bay.
The standing stones seem likely to have been part of a circle, although there are only three of them.
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From Drainage to Divination: The Cheshire Stone’s Secrets
I recently stumbled upon the theory that a stone – the Cheshire, or perhaps the Cheddar Stone as some insist on calling it – perched on on the edge of Urra Moor, has a natural basin which has been carefully modified in prehistoric times by the addition of a notch to channel the water outflow towards Garfit Gap and th ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36419
#Bilsdale #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #wainstones #folklore #Prehistory
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Great Fryup Dale: Cooking Up Change
Nestled in the dramatic expanse of the North York Moors National Park, where heather dominates the moors, trees line the becks in the dales, and the coastline is battered by the North Sea, lies Great Fryup Dale, a place as delectable as its name. It is, by all appearances, a great deal like its sibling, Little Fryup Dale—though, of course, it is the larger and presumably ...
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Morning Sun on Cold Moor
A panorama of Cold Moor from the vantage point of the Wainstones; to the right, the col known as Garfit Gap.
What caught my eye in this view is the way the morning sun, hanging low, highlights the remains of the old jet mining drifts. These drift entrances, now long collapsed, appear as V-shaped scars etched into the hillside. They create a line, gently tilting to the le ...
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An Overcast Day on Ainthorpe Rigg — A Dark Chapter in American History — Can Horrific Reprisals ever be Justified?
On a dreary day, I trudged over the wet moorland across Ainthorpe Rigg, under a dull and overcast sky. Reaching the edge, I found myself looking down at Little Fryup Dale, with Crossley Side sprawled below me.
In the history of events that happened on this day, this morning, I had come across ...
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Cheese, Stones, and a Summer Solstice Alignment
I've been diving back into that book, "Rock Art and Ritual," the one I got off eBay a few weeks back. It's been giving me the itch to go revisit some of the out of the way nooks and crannies on the North York Moors.
So today, I took a little jaunt around Urra Moor, with a slight detour to check out that massive outcrop o ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=33054
#Bilsdale #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #UrraMoor #wainstones #prehistoric
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Prehistoric Rock Art at Garfit Gap
Garfit Gap, that well-known col on the Cleveland Way nestling between Cold Moor and the Wainstones, is one of the four natural routes climbing up from the Cleveland Plain, southward over the barrier of Cleveland Hills into Bilsdale. Each route involves a formidable climb. Nowadays, though, the Clay Bank route, aided and abetted by the B1257 road, is favoured. Ye ...
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“The Glorious Twelfth” — A Tradition Under Scrutiny
The moors were eerily silent in this morning, a stark departure from the cacophony of gunfire that might be expected to reverberate across the heather today. Not a single report echoed in the air, just an eerie silence that draped the landscape like a shroud. Even the normally noisy grouse seem to sense an awareness of th ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=32868
#CodhillHeights #HuttonMoor #Kildale #NorthYorkMoors #GrouseShooting
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Fryup Heads
An "isolated eminence", according to the Rev. Canon Atkinson, seems an elegant way of describing the hill known as Heads, which separates the dales of Little and Great Fryup.
Although designated 'Open Access Land' there are few ways up onto the hill, consequently, it seems quiet and little walked. But historically it has been well used. Field systems, ditches, clearance cairns and e ...
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A chilly view across Garfit Gap to Hasty Bank
Right of centre is Whingroves, a farm which appears to have evolved into industrial pheasant rearing.
However, in 1896 it was a typical mixed farm run by Isaac Garbutt, a surname that has been on the Bilsdale parish register since the 16th century. That year, Isaac's wife Mary gave birth to a boy who was named John William, who later came to ...