#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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February Fair-Maids
The signs are there for all to see. The frogs in the garden pond have woken, shaking off winter like old men rising from stiff chairs. Hazel catkins hang thick and yellow in the brief scraps of sunlight. A few brave daffodil buds test the air. The sun provides apricity, its setting creeps past five o’clock, and hope, stubborn as ever, returns by inche ...
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Nettle Wood in Autumn’s Glow
Netle Hole: Two modest parcels of woodland lie beside Cliff Ridge Wood, gifted to the National Trust in 1991 by Lady Fry for the princely sum of ten pounds. A bargain, one might say, for a place that now looks splendid in autumn, its beech saplings blazing away where once nettles ruled.
Farmers, of course, had little patienc ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/05/nettle-wood-in-autumns-glow/
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Orange Spots — The Slow Death of Ash Dieback
Ash dieback is sweeping through Cliff Ridge Wood, and the National Trust Rangers have been out marking doomed ash trees with orange spots. These are the infected—struck by a disease caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus. It came from Asia, hitched a ride on the global plant trade, and now spreads on th ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/05/orange-spots-the-slow-death-of-ash-dieback/
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Bombweed, a Hall Built of Basalt and German POWs
The vivid pinks of Rosebay Willowherb blaze across summer landscapes, yet most pass them by. Known as Fireweed, it is often the first plant to reclaim burnt ground.
That was not always the case. The Georgians treated it as a rarity, grown in gardens rather than spotted in the wild. Even ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/07/03/bombweed-a-hall-built-of-basalt-and-german-pows/
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Mother Shimble’s Snick-needles
The famous Bluebells of Newton and Cliff Rigg Woods are having a lie-in. Give them a week, perhaps, before they are at their best. Meanwhile, the true prima donna of the woodland floor is the Greater Stitchwort, cluttering the place with its endless sprinkling of white, star-shaped flowers that seem to think themselves terribly ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/24/mother-shimbles-snick-needles/
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The Pannierman Way
A pair of ancient standing stones flank a stretch of weather-worn path known as the Kirby Bank Trod. This marvel of medieval civil engineering forms part of a so-called “Long Trod” — a term employed because it would have required “considerable resource and supra-parochial organisation” to build such an “economic venture of some significance.”
The tro ...
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A Brief and Unnecessary Guide to Burrs
When I was a lad, I remember a Saturday morning BBC Radio programme called Children’s Favourites. One of the songs frequently played was I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, sung by an American named Burl Ives. I thought Burl was an cool name.
At the time, I had no idea that ‘burl’ is the American term for those un ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/02/23/a-brief-and-unnecessary-guide-to-burrs/
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Cliff Rigg Scallywags Hideout
A year ago, I wrote about the Great Ayton Scallywags Patrol, a secretive Auxiliary Unit stationed in the area during the Second World War. Unlike the familiar, shambolic image of “Dad’s Army,” these men were part of a covert Home Guard unit. If the Germans had invaded, they could expect to last about a week—hardly an encouragin ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/02/22/cliff-rigg-scallywags-hideout/
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The Peasants’ Revolt — A Local Connection
On this day in 1381, Richard II met the leaders of Wat Tyler's Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath. The rebels stormed the Tower of London and entered without resistance. This revolt, though ultimately a failure, came to be seen as a harbinger of the decline of serfdom in medieval England. It heightened awareness among the upper classes of the urgent need for ...
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Kissing trees
Nineteen years ago in February, the landscape draped in snow, I found myself fascinated by a pair of beech saplings, their slender forms intertwined like old lovers. Over the passing years, one of the trees has asserted dominance, its girth swelling, while its companion languished in subservience, scarcely growing at all. Yet, despite this apparent power dynamic, the two trees fused tog ...
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From Warren House to Toft Hill Scout Camp
From the vantage point up Kirby Bank, one's eyes are drawn across the Vale of Cleveland to the iconic silhouette of Roseberry Topping. Closer though, in this picturesque view, stands the Pybus Scout Camp, its white facade gleaming under the cloudy sky. Adjacent to it lies Ricey Hill, adorned with the mellow yellow flowers of gorse.
Once known as Warre ... -
The Great Ayton Scallywags
A certain topic that has occupied my thoughts for some time is an Auxiliary Unit Patrol that was stationed in Great Ayton during World War II. This covert unit differed significantly from the stereotypical 'Dad's Army.' I recall hearing at some point that, in the event of a German invasion, the anticipated life expectancy for these men, should they be deployed ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=34333
#Aireyholme #CliffRidgeWood #GreatAyton #NorthYorkMoors #WW2
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Donna Cross—from Medieval cross to a legal feud
On the col between Cold Moor and Cringle, one almost stumbles across the stump of Donna Cross hidden amidst the bracken. A boulder, rooted deep in the earth, serves as its natural base, with a socket in which a stone is wedged. This stone, however, is not believed to be a part of the original shaft, of which there is no trace.
The ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=33170
#Kirby #KirkbyinCleveland #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #medieval
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“T’ biggest hill in all Yorkshur”
It is generally accepted that the now populous district of the North Riding which we call Cleveland is bounded on its southern extremity by the Cleveland Hills. This is not so.
The district of Cleveland comprises the archdeaconry of that name, which extends considerably farther south, as far as Picker ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31516
#ClevelandHills #CliffRidgeWood #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #18th-century #medieval #NationalTrust
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I set out this morning intending to take a photo on the route that Dalton Taylor would have taken on his last day at work at Roseberry Ironstone Mine from his lodgings in Ayton
He would have climbed this path, probably before dawn, in 1913. I thought it was on this day, 110 years ago, he died from a roof collapse but have since found out that Taylor was actually killed a week earlier ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31183
#CliffRidgeWood #NorthYorkMoors #ironstonemining #NationalTrust