Roseberry’s Hedge: Ten Years in the Making
Ten years ago, I helped the National Trust plant 4,000 saplings along the north west boundary of Roseberry Topping, where it meets the fields known as Rye Banks. The North York Moors National Park Traditional Boundary Scheme footed the bill. Hawthorn made up the bulk of the planting, with blackthorn, maple, haze ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/13/roseberrys-hedge-ten-years-in-the-making/
Beyond Apathy — Learning to Care Again
Appreciation of nature arrives like sunrise through a dark forest. What was once the shadow of youth becomes colour. Grass, rock, heather all minding their own business, doing it well. For the moment the world makes sense and you do too. You are small, but not spare. You fit. That is enough.
Then, darkness returns. Not ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2026/01/12/beyond-apathy-learning-to-care-again/
Autumn’s Splendour and Shadow
Autumn colours never repeat themselves. Some years they dazzle, others they merely please, yet always they seem above the average. This season the woods and commons are blaze with bronze oaks, copper beeches, flashes of yellow, and the odd scarlet sentinel. Only the ash stands bare and grey, its leaves long gone. Even the ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/10/20/autumns-splendour-and-shadow/
#NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryCommon #ClimateChange #NationalTrust
Grazing on the Common
Roseberry Common is, as its name implies, Common land. Once belonging to the Lord of the Manor of Newton, it was vital to village life. Here the people gathered fuel, grazed their livestock, and scraped together the means to keep both body and hearth alive through harsh seasons.
If you look closely, you may spot a flock of sheep grazing on t ...
When War Came to Teesside: The Night the Zeppelins Roared
On the night of 2nd May 1916, the New Moon cast an eerie darkness over the coastal towns and villages of the Yorkshire Coast. As the tranquil evening unfolded, an unsettling noise gradually erupted from the sky, until it echoed like the roar of an express train. Moments later, a serie ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/05/02/when-war-came-to-teesside-the-night-the-zeppelins-roared/
Cleveland: A County No One Wanted
All Fools’ Day 1974—the perfect occasion for bureaucratic tomfoolery. On this particular day, the North Riding of Yorkshire relinquished half of Roseberry Topping to the nascent “County of Cleveland.” A curious choice of name, given that “Cleveland” means “hilly land” in Old English, whereas this new county ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/01/cleveland-a-county-no-one-wanted/
#NewtonMoor #NorthYorkMoors #RoseberryCommon #RoseberryTopping #history
Falling Rocks: One from Space, One from a Chopper?
On this day in 1795, a meteorite made an unscheduled stop in Wold Newton, East Riding, thrilling a ploughman who narrowly avoided being flattened. Witnesses reported a dark object streaking through the sky before slamming into the earth, leaving a crater nearly a metre wide. It punched through 300 mm of soil, embedding itself 180 mm into the ...
Where are all the Holly Berries?
Two years ago, I posted a photo of a holly tree, heavy with bright red berries, a cheerful sight that now belongs to history. That tree has since been unceremoniously axed, part of the grand plan to reduce tree cover on Roseberry Common to a mere 10%. Why? To prevent the Common from succeeding into woodland. The holly’s glorious past now reduced to a habitat pile f ...
Roseberry Topping’s Hedgerow: A Conservation Success Story
Hedgerows, those underappreciated lines of greenery crisscrossing the countryside, are not just decorative. They actually serve a purpose: holding soil in place, shielding livestock from the elements, and making rotational grazing less of a logistical headache. They also connect habitats, encourage biodiversity, and even drag a bit of carb ...
The Leaning Larch of Roseberry Common
A tree of little grandeur—stunted, battered, and twisted by all that the North York Moors can throw at it—leans, barely upright, on Roseberry Common, straining its gnarled branches towards Easby Moor, where the monument to Capt. James Cook RN stands.
This, let us say, “larch” — and I am sure some arborist will leap to correct me — exudes an air of stoic isolation, grows defi ...
Mick Garratt
