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Chop Gate, a School of Eight
A photo for posterity. It shows the busy main road through Chop Gate, with Bilsdale Midcable CE Primary School standing on the left, likely facing conversion in the not-too-distant future into some private residence. Education in Chop Gate dates back to 1781. This 1909 school building features modernised classrooms and a garden where the children…
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Restoring Dovedale’s Hidden Water Meadow
A walk down lower Dovedale shows land shaped by people, past and present. In the featured photograph above, the newly mown grass reveals the earthbank of an ancient field boundary, which the Ordnance Survey map still records. Dovedale Beck runs over Oxford Clay, and the valley floor holds a wet meadow rich in flowers. A…
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A Personal Walkthrough of the 2026 Turner Prize
This exhibition is running at MIMA, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, until 29 March 2027, and the winner will be announced on 10 December. Art is not my usual territory, but a famous prize has come to Middlesbrough, so I went to look. An engineer makes a poor art critic, and my thoughts say…
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When Roseberry Topping Wears a Cap …
So begins the old rhyme, but it’s not a cap that now lies on the summit but a brown blanket, lying on the bare ground just below the trig point. Close up, it is an open weave of thick, coarse fibre. It looks like coir, which is made from coconut husk, though I have no…
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Drummer Hill: A Farm with a Page of Its Own
A farm with its own Wikipedia page is a rarity, yet Drummer Hill Farm, near Ingleby Greenhow, has earned one. The reason is its Grade II* listed horse gin, still standing where it was built. Many of the wheel sheds that housed these horse-driven threshing mills survive, and a good number have been converted into…
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One Valley, Two Photographs, Many More Trees
I set out to recreate an old black-and-white view of the Esk valley at Castleton, which I found on Facebook, but fell disappointingly short. I think the original was taken from the old Methodist Chapel, now a private home. Trees block the view from Station Bank, and houses rule out the rest of the village,…
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Seeing Through the Dark Hours
I cycled past this sheep this morning. It regarded me with studied indifference. I turned around and pedalled back for a photograph. It had not moved an inch. Having captured the moment, I left it to its thoughts. Perhaps it was contemplating the clocks going back tonight. Perhaps sheep have better things to think about.…
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The Fields of Pinchinthorpe
Storm Austen battered the North last night, yet autumn still delivers. This view runs across the bracken on the lower slope of Roseberry Common to the fields of Pinchinthorpe. Pinchinthorpe takes its name from the ‘Pinciun’ or ‘Pinchun’ family, who held land here in the twelfth century. The township was divided into northern and southern…
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Fifty Years in these Woods, and Still Discovering
There is something magical about autumn, with its rich palette of colours transforming the woodland into a living canvas. Today, I was volunteering with the National Trust in Newton Wood, building dead hedges to encourage visitors to stick to the newly improved path and give the woodland undergrowth a chance to recover from the pressure…
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Mulgrave Estate Walks: Much Ado About Very Little
We had read about some exciting new walks opened up through the Mulgrave Estate and thought we would give them a try. A chance to explore terrain previously inaccessible to the public. How generous. How progressive. Naturally, I had rather high hopes. In retrospect, perhaps a closer look at the routes before setting off might…
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