#northyorkmoors — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #northyorkmoors, aggregated by home.social.
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Lake Gormire at the foot of Sutton Bank on the edge of the North York Moors. It's fed by underwater springs.
Despite its Old Norse name meaning "filthy swamp" it's apparently a top wild swimming spot #northyorkshire #northyorkmoors
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Echoes in the Vale: The Ghostly Rise and Fall of Leven Vale Cottages
By the mid-1850s, “Ironstone Fever” had Cleveland in its grip. The success at Eston tempted the Trustees of the young Robert Bell Turton to open up the Kildale Estate through an 1855 Act of Parliament. Investors fell for the “rabbit ...
#Kildale #NorthYorkMoors #RiverLeven #19thcentury #history #IronstoneMining
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A New View, a New Mudd.e
The recent clear felling of a block of forestry in Ayton Banks Wood has opened up a new view of Roseberry. The commercial timber has gone, leaving a few gangly birch trees to stand guard over the valley. It turns out that Gribdale Terrace, that isolated row of white cottages, has a history which is a bit of a muddle.
One academic maintains that thes ... -
Hi all, thank you so much for all the follows, favourites, boosts and messages! You have all been so lovely and welcoming. It might take me a little while to reply and follow back etc but I'll do my best to try and catch up 😊 #fediverse We are currently on holiday in North Yorkshire where this photo was taken #northyorkshire #northyorkmoors
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Thornton Dale #cottages #Yorkshire #NorthYorkMoors
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A Murder at Kildale, 1871
The view from the hills above Kildale, taken yesterday — when the weather was rather more agreeable than today’s thoroughly dreich conditions.
The North York Moors is not the sort of place one associates with violent crime. Yet on the evening of Wednesday 16 August 1871, a quiet farm in Kildale became the scene of a killing that shoo ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/09/a-murder-at-kildale-1871/
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Valley Garden: Bluebells, Bog Plants and a Baffling Fern
In the early 1950s, Lord Feversham had a rather splendid idea. To keep his staff at Bransdale Lodge busy, he ordered a “wild garden” to be carved out of Gimmer Bank Wood, on the soggy banks of Blowith Slack, a tributary of Hodge Beck. In went azaleas, rhododendrons, flowering cherries ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/08/valley-garden-bluebells-bog-plants-and-a-baffling-fern/
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Bonfield Ghyll
Humanity is not a guest of nature. It is a meddling tenant. In the 1980s, university researchers came to some remarkable conclusions using peat cores taken from the high reaches of Bonfield Gill. Using radiocarbon dating, they found that those Mesolithic folk were not living in harmony with the woods. They were playing with fire.
These people were ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/07/bonfield-ghyll/
#BonfieldGhyll #NorthYorkMoors #history #mesolithic #Prehistory
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Standing on Nature for a Better Angle
The track in this photograph of the bluebells in the National Trust’s Newton Wood is a monument to the perfect social media post. We love nature so much that we are treading it into the ground. It is so disheartening.
Bluebells are sensitive souls. Their leaves are soft and succulent. They are generally intolerant o ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/05/standing-on-nature-for-a-better-angle/
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The Railway That Never Was: Helmsley to Thirsk, 1856
Look at this photograph of Gowerdale. Green, serene, and — rather importantly — entirely free of Victorian ironwork. It came within a whisker of being otherwise.
By 1856, Britain’s great Railway Mania was already ancient history — or at least a decade-old hangover. The mid-1840s had ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/05/04/the-railway-that-never-was-helmsley-to-thirsk-1856/
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‘Hidden’ North Yorkshire glasshouse cafe visitors love in beautiful walled garden https://www.allforgardening.com/1749084/hidden-north-yorkshire-glasshouse-cafe-visitors-love-in-beautiful-walled-garden/ #garden #glasshouse #HelmsleyWalledGarden #NorthYorkMoors #NorthYorkshire #OutdoorSeating #VinehouseCafe #WalledGarden #YorkshireRose
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Ramsons—The Plant That Smells Like Trouble and Tastes Like Dinner
You will smell ‘em before you see ‘em. A whole wood reeking of garlic — this is wild garlic, or Ramsons, doing its thing for a couple of months each spring.
The Old English word “brmsa” gave its name to places still on the map today: Ramsbottom, Ramsey, Ramsd ...
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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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A New Corner of Bransdale
Someone went to extraordinary lengths to block up what was once a field gate. It sits in a tangle of old inbye fields to the west of St. Catherine’s House in Bransdale. The field boundaries appear on the oldest Ordnance Survey maps, so the dry-stone wall and its two gateposts, or “stoops”, were almost certainly already there when the map-makers came calling.
Wh ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/30/a-new-corner-of-bransdale/
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The Last of the Lords
Roseberry Topping, North Yorkshire, 29 April 2026 — a perfect English spring morning. Out there, bluebells. In Westminster, history.
Today, the current Parliament ended. And with that, seven centuries of hereditary peers sitting in the House of Lords came to a quiet end.
No fanfare. No farewell parade. Just the music stopping.
The story begins in 1999, whe ...
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Arncliffe — Where Eagles Once Dared
This is the sandstone crag of Arncliffe on the western edge of the North York Moors. The name comes from the Old Scandinavian word ‘ern’ for eagle. It is a pleasant fiction that these birds once nested on these rocks. A non-descript photo perhaps but it leads on to a bit of recent news.
The government has pledged £1 million to i ...https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/28/arncliffe-where-eagles-once-dared/
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Cockayne: The Land of Milk, Honey, and Mumbling Clerks
Medieval peasants dreamed of a place called Cockaigne — a land of luxury and ease where roasted pigs wandered about with knives in their backs to make carving easy, grilled geese flew directly into one’s mouth, and the wine flowed freely. Streets paved with pastry. Skies that rained cheese. You get the ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/23/cockayne-the-land-of-milk-honey-and-mumbling-clerks/
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The Humble Bluebell and the Heavyweight Rift
The bluebells in Newton Wood seem a bit thin on the ground. The coverage of these flowers is not as full as in previous years. It is still early days though. In a fortnight they may well be more vibrant.
Some people like the flowers. Others might remember the Scottish group called The Bluebells. Their track "Yo ...https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/22/the-humble-bluebell-and-the-heavyweight-rift/
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The Ancient Yellow Field
Every spring, Britain turns yellow. These vast, almost aggressive swathes of rapeseed feel utterly modern — the crop of motorway verges, cooking oil, and biodiesel. Surely this is a 20th-century invention?
Sort of.
This is almost certainly some genetically engineered new cultivar, but let’s meet the navew. That is what our ancestors called ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/20/the-ancient-yellow-field/
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Where the Moor Ends and the Farm Begins
A shaft of sunlight illuminates the bright green fields of Farndale, seen from the old ironstone railway crossing at High Blakey Moor. Brown rushes surround a small peaty pool in the foreground. Dark drystone walls cascade down the hillside beneath a wide, cloud-filled sky.
The view tells a story in two colours. Up here: the browns of ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/19/where-the-moor-ends-and-the-farm-begins/
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Cleveland Way.. " crosses the North York Moors National Park, boasting great vistas from sweeping heather moorlands. Upon reaching the coast at Saltburn-by-the-Sea, the second half of the route then follows the North Yorkshire coast as far as Filey, taking in the highest cliffs in eastern England at Boulby."
https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/en_GB/trails/cleveland-way/trail-information/#SolarPunkSunday #ClevelandWay #NorthYorkMoors #NationalTrails #Nature #Walks #Bike #Cycling #UK #WildLife
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Hatless in Great Ayton
A deep shadow hangs over Newton Wood while Great Ayton basks in glorious Spring sunshine.
I found this article in the Northern Weekly Gazette for 8th October 1869. It is a splendid little window into Victorian village life.
“FRISKY JACK ELOPES WITH A LABOURER'S WIFE FROM MIDDLESBROUGH”.
The quiet village of Great Ayton was, last week, ... -
Chop Gate: Pedlars, Vikings and a Farmer’s Opinion
Chop Gate sits quietly in Bilsdale until the TT roars through and reminds everyone it exists. But the village has a quieter puzzle that never goes away: nobody can agree on what to call it, or what it means.
Travel guides and linguists will tell you confidently that it is pronounced “Ch ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/11/chop-gate-pedlars-vikings-and-a-farmers-opinion/
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Coast to Coast Opens — But Not For All
The Coast to Coast is now an official National Trail. Years of effort, a considerable sum of public money, and another grand ceremony. But one writer greets the opening carrying not a celebratory banner but a rather pointed question: Who, exactly, is it for?
Charlotte Ditchburn is happy to acknowledge that these ...http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/10/coast-to-coast-opens-but-not-for-all/
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Bloworth Slack—Not as Lazy as It Sounds
Bloworth Slack, just moments before it meets Badger Gill to become Hodge Beck. Bransdale again — but today we’ve been beside this quietly lovely woodland stream, its amber rocks lit by a sky so clear it almost seems rude.
I never took Geography at ‘O’ Level. I was a science boy, apparently, and Geography was firmly on the ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/04/02/bloworth-slack-not-as-lazy-as-it-sounds/
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The Duncombe Drive: Lost in Plain Sight
Repairs to fencing offered a rare glimpse into a part of Bransdale not open to the public.
The photograph shows Hall Plantation, where a line of beech trees accentuates what is clearly an old trackway, its course still visible beneath a deep carpet of last year’s leaves.
The track has been sittin ...
https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/26/the-duncombe-drive-lost-in-plain-sight/
#Bransdale #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #NationalTrust
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Lady Day: When England Turned Over a New Leaf
March 25th was not just another date. It was the day England once held its breath, then exhaled.
Until 1751, Lady Day was the legal New Year. Winter ended. Debts were called in. Contracts expired. The nation lurched back to life like a cart horse after a long cold stable. Rents fell due, farm tenancies e ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/25/lady-day-when-england-turned-over-a-new-leaf/
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The Pale — Playground of the Percys
Viewed here from Percy Cross Rigg, Capt. Cook’s Monument is just about visible on the highest point of Easby Moor. This eastern end, in the parish of Kildale, is known as Coate Moor and those unforested fields on the spur are labelled “The Pale” on Ordnance Survey maps. It is a relic of one of the three medie ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/24/the-pale-playground-of-the-percys/
#CoateMoor #Kildale #Lonsdale #NorthYorkMoors #history #medieval
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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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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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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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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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Purple Heather, Brown Truth
The ling, or common heather, has reached its peak bloom just days before the start of the grouse shooting season — the annual spectacle in which profit and sport take precedence over the land itself. This year, the display is patchy. Whole swathes have turned a brittle reddish-brown, appearing dead but ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/08/09/purple-heather-brown-truth/
#NewtonMoor #NorthYorkMoors #CallunaVulgaris #GrouseMoorManagement #Ling #NationalTrust
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4⭐ Lord Stones, North Yorkshire UK
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/04/lord-stones-trails-north-yorkshire-uk.html
Named for nearby prehistoric stone monoliths, this is a popular spot for hiking, bookended with cups of tea at the cafe!#Hiking #Yorkshire #NorthYorkMoors #Trail #Outdoors #Blog #Walking #Nature #Cafe #Teeside #Middlesborough
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4⭐ Lord Stones, North Yorkshire UK
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/04/lord-stones-trails-north-yorkshire-uk.html
Named for nearby prehistoric stone monoliths, this is a popular spot for hiking, bookended with cups of tea at the cafe!#Hiking #Yorkshire #NorthYorkMoors #Trail #Outdoors #Blog #Walking #Nature #Cafe #Teeside #Middlesborough
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4⭐ Lord Stones, North Yorkshire UK
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/04/lord-stones-trails-north-yorkshire-uk.html
Named for nearby prehistoric stone monoliths, this is a popular spot for hiking, bookended with cups of tea at the cafe!#Hiking #Yorkshire #NorthYorkMoors #Trail #Outdoors #Blog #Walking #Nature #Cafe #Teeside #Middlesborough
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4⭐ Lord Stones, North Yorkshire UK
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/04/lord-stones-trails-north-yorkshire-uk.html
Named for nearby prehistoric stone monoliths, this is a popular spot for hiking, bookended with cups of tea at the cafe!#Hiking #Yorkshire #NorthYorkMoors #Trail #Outdoors #Blog #Walking #Nature #Cafe #Teeside #Middlesborough
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4⭐ Lord Stones, North Yorkshire UK
https://www.trailspotting.com/2025/04/lord-stones-trails-north-yorkshire-uk.html
Named for nearby prehistoric stone monoliths, this is a popular spot for hiking, bookended with cups of tea at the cafe!#Hiking #Yorkshire #NorthYorkMoors #Trail #Outdoors #Blog #Walking #Nature #Cafe #Teeside #Middlesborough
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The Cleveland Hills on a Myst-Hakel Morning
I slogged up through the old whinstone quarry, staring at the ground, my thoughts elsewhere. I braced myself to find the usual rubbish left behind by quad bikers, as if the world is their personal skip. I could hear them active yesterday. The frost-covered, sterile earth stretched ahead, with the bikers’ berms and humps standing around like forg ...
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Brume, Roke, and Other Vapourous Delights
There is something magical about mist creeping up the dales of the North York Moors, at least you’re being sentimental. Behind me, the mist—sorry, ‘brume’—was crawling up the Vale of Mowbray, but that was less of a spectacle than this show over Raisdale and Bilsdale.
Speaking of brume, it is the ideal word for this frosty vapour, with roots in the Roman term br ...
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Roseberry In the Golden Hour
Roseberry was looking its usual self this morning as we trudged up Aireyholme Lane, the sun just beginning its obligatory climb over the Cleveland Hills. From this angle, Roseberry‘s distinctive shape is rather less obvious. High above, a waning gibbous moon lingered sulkily in the sky, and the early morning sunlight—in what us self-important photographers refer to as ...
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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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An Echo of Grosmont Priory
The Grandmontine Priory of Grosmont was established around 1200 at a site overlooking the River Esk. It was one Joan de Turnham who granted the site to the monks, and according to the deed of gift, a "mansion house" already existed there. Its surrounding fields, covering about 200 acres, were already in cultivation, evidenced by the use of the word "l ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=35925
#Grosmont #NorthYorkMoors #RiverEsk #19thcentury #mediaeval #monastic