The Conservation Walk That Has Vanished
It seems fitting to be posting this at the end of January 2026, a month that quietly marked a profound centenary. One hundred years ago, Section 193 of the Law of Property Act 1925 gave the public a legal right to access around a third of the common land in England and Wales. For the first time, the law recognised a simple ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/31/the-conservation-walk-that-has-vanished/
Faith, Frugality, and Education: Ayton School in the 1840s
A dreich Sunday morning left the village unusually quiet—an ideal moment to post a piece that has been waiting patiently on the back burner for the right photo.
Old buildings are silent witnesses to history. Their stones and timbers absorb human lives, ambitions, and compromises, even when thos ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/11/faith-frugality-and-education-ayton-school-in-the-1840s/
Great Ayton’s Boxing Day Ritual: Auf Wiedersehen?
In 2004, hunting foxes with dogs was banned. This did not, however, end the “sport”. It merely trimmed it back and left three flavours of “hunting” on the menu.
First comes trail hunting. This involves following a scent of animal urine laid on a route that is meant to be unknown to the riders. In theory, it ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/26/great-aytons-boxing-day-ritual-auf-wiedersehen/
Roseberry Watching Over Enclosed Land
The nearest field in today’s photograph marks the site of the old farmstead of Summerhill, born out of Great Ayton’s enclosure of the common land in 1658. At that time, the commons stretched all the way to the top of Roseberry, open and shared in a way that would soon vanish.
...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/17/roseberry-watching-over-enclosed-land/
#Aireyholme #AytonBank #GreatAyton #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryTopping #17thcentury #history
Crimson Herald of the Coming Sun
This is a novelty for this long-suffering blog: a photograph taken from my very own doorstep, with sunrise still twenty minutes off and the sky already plotting its little drama.
Most people know the old saying about the red sky and the fortunes of sailors, with its murky origins somewhere in scripture and the occasional attempt to swap in a shepherd for nautical ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/12/11/crimson-herald-of-the-coming-sun/
Echoes from the Old Workings beneath Cliff Rigg
In 1894 the Northern Echo carried a grim report of a inquest into a fatality in a whinstone quarry near Nettle Hole, a place that sits a good fifty metres below any workings that make sense on a modern map. My first thought was that the incident must point towards a tunnel beneath Aireyhol ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/24/echoes-from-the-old-workings-beneath-cliff-rigg/
#CliffRidgeWood #GreatAyton #19thcentury #history #whinstone
Winter Transforms the Village
Fresh snow arrived over night and dressed the village with the sort of delicate filigree that flatters every scene. Even the drabbest view has been turned into something fit for a gallery.
This is Station Road, usually choked with parked cars, this morning quiet and softened so completely that the few vehicles present appear to have been swathed in disguise. On t ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/20/winter-transforms-the-village/
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/
The Forgotten Lichenologist of Great Ayton: William Mudd
Watching over this popular approach to Easby Moor stand a pair of weathered gateposts, their stone faces mottled with centuries of lichen. They guard the path with the weary dignity of old sentinels, and one cannot help but wonder: did they stand here before Captain ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/11/04/the-forgotten-lichenologist-of-great-ayton-william-mudd/
#CaptCooksMonument #EasbyMoor #GreatAyton #NorthYorkMoors #history
Cliff Rigg Wood: An Old Tramway, a Broken Gate and Echoes of Cook
I thought it worth recording this path while it remains as it is—the bottom one through Cliff Rigg Wood. For posterity, as they say. It is due for “improvement” in the next few weeks, though I am not quite sure what the result will look like.
The National Trust, in their ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/18/cliff-rigg-wood-an-old-tramway-a-broken-gate-and-echoes-of-cook/
Mick Garratt