#northyorkmoors — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #northyorkmoors, aggregated by home.social.
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Gallow How: Where Danby Meets Westerdale
On Thursday the first of August 1907, Danby staged its customary ‘Riding the Boundary’, a grand ritual meant to affirm the limits of the Manor, and by extension the Parish, while also paying annual homage to the Lord of the Manor, Hugh Richard, Viscount Downe.
The bailiff opened the day with a ringing “Oyez ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/22/gallow-how-where-danby-meets-westerdale/
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The Bottom End of Castleton, Where a Door Closed…
I had been leafing through Joseph Ford’s “Some Reminiscences and Folk Lore of Danby Parish and District”, when one small passage stopped me in my tracks. Ford described the steady trickle of those who slipped away from the Esk Valley in the nineteenth century, chasing whispers of a new life across the ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/14/the-bottom-end-of-castleton-where-a-door-closed/
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Boltby Scar: The Quarry That Fetched Four Bob a Ton
A view along Boltby Scar, on the western edge of Hambleton Down, where the wind brushes across an Iron Age promontory fort and ancient round barrows. Beneath them lies a long-abandoned limestone quarry, silent now, but once echoing with the clang of hammers and the groan of wagons. Nearly a centu ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/19/boltby-scar-the-quarry-that-fetched-four-bob-a-ton/
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When Castleton Fed a Queen
From Castleton Rigg above Danby Dale, the eye follows the curve of the valley. To the right stands The Howe, and to the left, on the lower ridge lies Castleton, a village whose name carries the echo of a medieval stronghold. The castle itself rose on Castle Hill around 1089, and with it came cottages and workshops, likely clustering ar ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/09/17/when-castleton-fed-a-queen/
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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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The Shah of Thorgill and His £26 Rebellion
This is Thorgill: a tributary of the River Seven, the main drainage for Rosedale. While technically a watercourse, it is perhaps better known as a hamlet, once even managing to sustain a Methodist Chapel.
Thorgill briefly staggered into the national spotlight in the 1950s, not through any great achievement, b ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/12/the-shah-of-thorgill-and-his-26-rebellion/
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Repairing the Damage: A Belated Attempt to Save the Moors
In 1955, Bill Cowley had the bright idea of establishing a long-distance walk across the North York Moors, from Osmotherley to Ravenscar. By the late 1970s, the Lyke Wake Walk had become a rite of passage for the outdoor-obsessed, with an estimated 18,000 people a year trudging the 42-mile route. ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/03/16/repairing-the-damage-a-belated-attempt-to-save-the-moors/
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The White Flint Legacy of Castleton
At the crest of an old tramway incline from the former silica quarries, once the workings of the Sheffield-based firm J. Grayson Lowood & Co. Ltd., one gazes across the Esk valley. Just off-centre in the distance lies the looming hump of Castleton Rigg, climbing to the highest point of the “Fat Moors.” The village of Castleton itself clings to the f ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36145
#Castleton #NorthYorkMoors #20thCentury #IndustrialArchaeology
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The Sheep Walk’s Silent Lament
Long ago, or so the legend goes, a Danish chieftain met a sticky end amongst these rocky crags now known as the Wainstones, a name supposedly derived from the Old Saxon ‘wanian,’ meaning to lament. Perhaps our unfortunate chieftain found his doom in this rather dramatic boulder-strewn gap between the rock outcrops, now rather humbly named The Sh ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36102
#NorthYorkMoors #wainstones #ClevealndWay #CoastToCoast #LykeWakeWalk
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Betty Strother: A Yorkshire Witch
Cycling through Danby Park today opened up views of Castleton, perched precariously on the rigg across the Esk Valley. I was reminded of one of those countless lockdown projects—those fleeting fancies born of enforced idleness—which, like so many others, has been unceremoniously abandoned to gather dust. This particular project involved the tedious task of ...
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Elfi The Dwarf — The Story Told at Ye Sign of the Fox & Hounds, Urra
The notion of transcribing these ancient folk tales of Richard Blakeborough, thought to be a splendid idea at first, an idea born during the Covid lockdown, now gnaws at my conscience with growing unease. Recent reports detailing the modification of Roald Dahl's cherishe ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=32062
#Castleton #HuttonleHole #Lastingham #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #Urra #folklore #RichardBlakeborough
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Hutton Moor — Biodiversity vs. Profit
This is Hutton Moor at the northern end of the Percy Cross Rigg track. I see that the self-seeded birch and spruce that have sprouted on the heather moorland have been unceremoniously cut down. The rationale is clear; if left unchecked, the moorland will eventually transform into a birch woodland. However, this does come at the cost of ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=34717
#HuttonMoor #NorthYorkMoors #ClevealndWay #ecology #GrouseMoorManagement
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Northdale’s Mysterious Stone Pig-Sty?
During my wandering around the aesthetic barns of Northdale yesterday, this little curiosity caught my eye.
A curving quadrantal chamber within a natural rock formation, adorned with two large recesses flanking the "southern" entrance and another substantial chamber gracing its northern flank. Clearly, the hands of man have toiled here, evident in the distinct dressing mark ...
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Red House
According Tom Scott Burns, Red House formerly served as a tavern for wayfarers traversing the moors, likely vying with The Lettered Board Inn, or Hamer House, where those in the business of panniers, colliers, and smugglers sought reprieve during their journey.
Red House, like Hamer House, fell into ruins over the ages. While the stones of the latter have all but vanished, no doubt sa ...
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Gallow Howe
In the hallowed depths of Whitby Museum there is a grisly relic — the 'Hand of Glory,' a mummified hand with a sinister past. Unearthed in the early 20th century by local historian Joseph Ford, this macabre exhibit is allegedly the preserved right hand of a criminal, amputated while still hanging from the gallows. It was rumoured that it would have been used by a burglar to plunge the occupants of ...
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Blakey Ridge and The Lion Inn: From Crutched Friars to Modern Hikers
A view across Rosedale towards Blakey Ridge. In the front, Florence Terrace, one of many rows of terraced cottages built to house the ironstone miners and their families. Rosedale's population surged in the two decades between 1851 and 1871.
Barely discernible on the distant skyline stands the Lion Inn. There are few inns more remot ...
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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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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
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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 ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=30877
#Capt.Cook'sMonument #EasbyMoor #EasbyMoor #Guisborough #NorthYorkMoors #RystonNab #temperatureinversion
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An early start
It was dry when I left home but by Gribdale Gate, the wind had picked up and it was beginning to spit, and any thoughts of photography had been forgotten.
Still, it was pleasant to see Gribdale empty of cars; apart from two early dog walkers.
It's has always been a popular car park as the easiest ascent up to Capt. Cook's Monument, ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=30716
#Capt.Cook'sMonument #GreatAyton #GreatAytonMoor #Gribdale #NorthYorkMoors #BeatingoftheBounds
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A brilliant day on Easby Moor for the Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team’s Remembrance Sunday gathering
The gathering took place at the memorial to the aircrew who died when their Lockheed Hudson aircraft crashed into the hill on 11th February 1940.
The aircraft took off from Thornaby-on-Tees at 04:10 and failed to gain suffient height due to …
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=30630
#Capt.Cook'sMonument #EasbyMoor #EasbyMoor #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #ClevelandMRT #remembrance