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Wallington Bridge
A photo from last weekend’s jaunt up Northumberland, we called in at Wallington Hall on the way home. This National Trust property is a sign that one can build a very good place if one is willing to import enough rum and sugar. This truth is not exactly comfortable for those who prefer their history…
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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 horizon under a sky without a single cloud. A…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Ridsdale Ironworks Pump House
Driving along the A68 through Northumberland, most people might glance at these ruins below Ridsdale and assume they are looking at a medieval castle. They are instead looking at a Victorian industrial building — and one with a remarkable story. This engine house was likely designed to resemble a rugged border stronghold. In 1839, the…
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Rede Bridge: Carrying Nothing But a Grassy Track
Built in 1715, Rede Bridge crosses the River Rede in rural Northumberland with two confident stone arches and a smaller flood arch on the right bank. It is Grade II listed. It is, by any measure, too good a bridge for a field path. So why build it at all? The most persuasive answer involves…
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The Castle That Time, Fire, and a Small River Are Finishing Off
That eroded mound is Tarset Castle, in the North Tyne valley. The steep, undercut flanks show the ongoing damage caused by the Tarset Burn. The gentle green mound does not look like much. It is, in fact, all that’s left of a castle that was once a record-holder, a border fortress, a bonfire, a quarry,…
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Hareshaw Linn: The Waterfall That Forgot Its Past
Standing here at the foot of Hareshaw Linn, I would swear nothing had ever disturbed this place. Dripping rock. Ancient ferns. A waterfall cascading thirty feet into a rust-brown pool. It feels, as one writer put it, like “an ancient rainforest.“ It is not. Not even slightly. As we discovered from the information board at…
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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 idea. Then someone…
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