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

Jack’s Short Life: From Rural Bilsdale to the Trenches of the Great War

A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/26/jacks-short-life-from-rural-bilsdale-to-the-trenches-of-the-great-war/

#Bilsdale #ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #19thcentury #history #WW1

POW! WHACK! The Circus Returns to Town

On this day in 1966, the campy spectacle of Batman made its debut on American television. Adam West donned the cape, Burt Ward chirped as Robin, and Cesar Romero refused to shave his moustache to play the Joker. Although by the time it hit British screens, I was too old, but I remember it well. It had simplistic morals for children, a relentlessly upbeat the ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=37189

#ColdMoor #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #wainstones

From Drainage to Divination: The Cheshire Stone’s Secrets

I recently stumbled upon the theory that a stone – the Cheshire, or perhaps the Cheddar Stone as some insist on calling it – perched on on the edge of Urra Moor, has a natural basin which has been carefully modified in prehistoric times by the addition of a notch to channel the water outflow towards Garfit Gap and th ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=36419

#Bilsdale #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #wainstones #folklore #Prehistory

Morning Sun on Cold Moor

A panorama of Cold Moor from the vantage point of the Wainstones; to the right, the col known as Garfit Gap.

What caught my eye in this view is the way the morning sun, hanging low, highlights the remains of the old jet mining drifts. These drift entrances, now long collapsed, appear as V-shaped scars etched into the hillside. They create a line, gently tilting to the le ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=34634

#ColdMoor #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #JetMining

Cheese, Stones, and a Summer Solstice Alignment

I've been diving back into that book, "Rock Art and Ritual," the one I got off eBay a few weeks back. It's been giving me the itch to go revisit some of the out of the way nooks and crannies on the North York Moors.

So today, I took a little jaunt around Urra Moor, with a slight detour to check out that massive outcrop o ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=33054

#Bilsdale #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #UrraMoor #wainstones #prehistoric

Prehistoric Rock Art at Garfit Gap

Garfit Gap, that well-known col on the Cleveland Way nestling between Cold Moor and the Wainstones, is one of the four natural routes climbing up from the Cleveland Plain, southward over the barrier of Cleveland Hills into Bilsdale. Each route involves a formidable climb. Nowadays, though, the Clay Bank route, aided and abetted by the B1257 road, is favoured. Ye ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=32909

#ColdMoor #GarfittGap #NorthYorkMoors #wainstones

A chilly view across Garfit Gap to Hasty Bank

Right of centre is Whingroves, a farm which appears to have evolved into industrial pheasant rearing.

However, in 1896 it was  a typical mixed farm run by Isaac Garbutt, a surname that has been on the Bilsdale parish register since the 16th century. That year, Isaac's wife Mary gave birth to a boy who was named John William, who later came to ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=31278

#ClevelandHills #GarfittGap #HastyBank #NorthYorkMoors