Ketton Ox: Animal & Pub, Pt 2 (NZ419129)

© Copyright Gordon Hatton and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative CommonsLicence.

The Ketton Ox public house, a fine-looking affair at No.100 High Street, Yarm, has a history stretching back, in various forms and under many names, some 400 years.  It must have enjoyed its fair share of custom during the town’s long reign as one of the region’s premier coaching stops – to say nothing of Yarm’s status as the Tees’ primary port before the rise of Stockton and Middlesbrough.

However, as elegant as it looks today, the establishment has dark associations with the once rampantly popular sport of cockfighting. Indeed the place was well-known for its gory gatherings when it was a legal pastime; but come a rather inconvenient change in the law in 1835, it had to move with the times… the landlord switching the venue to another room – conveniently fitted with a trapdoor to permit escape if the place was raided!

Being over four centuries old, the pub is, of course, haunted, with all manner of ghostly going-on, it would seem. Many put this down to the fact that the pub was once used as a morgue, primarily for bodies which, from time to time, found themselves floating lifeless in the River Tees.

Ketton Ox: Animal & Pub, Pt 1 (NZ419129)

The oldest inn / public house in Yarm is probably The Ketton Ox, neatly situated at No.100 High Street. It is named after the famous bull of the same name which is illustrated above.

This immense animal, better known in later life as the Durham Ox, lived during 1796-1807, and was an early example of what came to be known as the Shorthorn breed of cattle. Bred by Charles Colling of Ketton Hall, near Darlington, it hit the headlines after being exhibited in Darlington in 1799. In 1801, John Day bought the beast and renamed it the Durham Ox, showing it to gawping crowds far and wide across the land – spending most of 1802 in London alone.

Its weight was variously given as 171 stone – 270 stone, but its bulk was to prove its undoing when, in February 1807, it damaged its hip getting out of a carriage and had to be slaughtered several weeks later. It was said to be 189 stone dead weight.

Its legacy lives on in many an etching and painting (its image was even set in porcelain) – and in dozens of pub names around the world. Astonishingly, a town in Australia is even named after it.

Important Pub Meet (NZ419128)

© Copyright Pauline Eccles and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The little silver plaque betwixt window and entrance says it all:

S.&.D.R.

In the commercial room of this

hotel, on the

12^th Day of February, 1820

was held the

Promoters’ Meeting

of the

Stockton & Darlington

Railway –

The first public railway in the world.

Thomas Meynell, esq., of Yarm, presided.

Strangely enough, though, it wasn’t the first meeting of the railway pioneers for the construction of the famous S&DR – but it was the one from which the third, and successful, plan emerged which would eventually be approved by Parliament in April the following year.

Port of Yarm (NZ417131)

Though it may seem utterly unbelievable today, the town of Yarm, in the very depths of North-East England (and eighteen winding miles from the sea), was once the premier port of the River Tees. The industries of Middlesbrough, Stockton and Billingham – all downstream – now far outstrip Yarm in terms of river traffic, yet for centuries this was far from the case.

Until the building of the bridge at Stockton in 1771, the aging structure at Yarm was the nearest crossing point on the Tees to the sea. Furthermore, Yarm represents pretty much the tidal (and navigational) limit of the river, so the town understandably became an important spot for trade and commerce. However, it probably owes its ancient foundation to its easily defendable position in an inverted ‘U’ in the river’s course.

A royal charter granted in 1207 gave the Yarm its weekly market and two annual fairs; and the Black Friars settled in the town in the 13^th century, remaining until the 1580s.  The old stone bridge – still standing – was built in 1400, and the settlement grew and prospered until, essentially, merchant ships became too big to make it up river – with first Stockton, then Middlesbrough taking over the role as the River Tees’ main port. Yarm, however, remained prominent as a coaching stop – as is evidenced, at least historically, by its high number of inns and pubs.

Yarm looks anything but a port these days, yet is still as charming as ever.

The Secret History of Kirklevington Hall (NZ429108)

Well, it’s not easy to unravel because it was, er, a secret, you understand. But it seems that the grounds of Kirklevington Hall, situated between the village of the same name to the south and Yarm to the north, were a hotbed of covert activity during the mid-20^th century.

The hall itself was built by the Richardsons of Hartlepool in around 1881, and used as a family home until the great engineering family were decimated by the Great War. The final surviving family member died in 1940, and it passed, eventually, into the hands of the military who set the place up as a secret base of sorts – a WWII command centre, in fact, for a large tract of the North-East.

The hall itself was utilised, of course, and PoW pens were built in the grounds, but were never used. No one seems quite sure what else went on there, but a huge sprawling bunker was also constructed – but as far as I am able to ascertain this was built in the 1950s during the early years of the Cold War. Officially it was known as a ‘Royal Artillery Anti-Aircraft Operations Room’ (AAOR) and covered the Tees anti-aircraft zone. It seems to have formed an absolutely crucial link in our Cold War defence network.

Back in the year 2000 the ‘bunker’ looked like this – not sure what has become of it since. As for the hall, well, it’s now a hotel.

Castle Levington (NZ461103)

© Copyright Mick Garratt and licensed for reuse under this Creative CommonsLicence

Sometimes you wonder where they come from. Parish names, that is. Castle Le(a)vington is a township rather than a parish, actually, but a visitor may well wonder where the ‘castle’ is, or even was. You’d be unlikely to find it on the ground, though it is still marked as ‘Castle Hill’ on the OS map, tucked into a twist of the River Leven on the modern-day border of North Yorkshire. In case you still can’t find it, it’s about three miles SE of Yarm.

Even in the early 1800s it was tricky to find, as detailed by a historian by the name of Graves:

Here is a large steep hill, called the Castle-Hill, from which Castle Levington probably derives its name. It is situated on the banks of the Leven, is of a circular form, characteristic of a Danish fortification, but no vestiges of any building have ever been discovered.

It’s not likely to be Danish, with the history books now attributing its founding to Robert de Brus in the early 12^th century. Unlike many such earth and timber constructions, it was never ‘upgraded’ in stone, and faded away rather quickly in the ensuing centuries. It was dismantled in the second half of the 12^th century, then the de Meynel’s maintained a timber hall on the spot from the late 13^th to the late 14^th centuries. And that seems to have been the end of human activity.

Though only the protective earthworks remain today, it is clear that a considerable amount of effort went into the site during the ‘castle’s’ short lifetime.

1980s Nunthorpe: Famous Births (NZ536133)

In the early 1980s, Nunthorpe, on the southern edge of the Middlesbrough conurbation, gave birth to and raised three of our most prominent sportsmen.  Amazingly, in the space of six years, from 1980-85, three individuals were born there who were all to rise to international stardom in recent times.

The eldest of these, Jonathan Woodgate, was born on 22^nd January 1980. Appearing for club sides Leeds, Newcastle, Real Madrid, Middlesbrough, Spurs and (currently) Stoke, he rose to the very top of his profession when he appeared for England eight times during 1999-2008. An immensely talented centre-half, his career has been cruelly blighted by injury, misfortune and not a little controversy.

Chris Tomlinson was born on 15^th September 1981, and has been Britain’s premier long-jumper since he broke the long-standing national record in the discipline in 2002, and, though he missed out on the 2008 Olympic Final, he remains a high hope for London 2012.

Liam Plunkett is the youngest of Nunthorpe’s sporting stars, entering this world on 6^th April 1985. He has excelled for Durham County Cricket Club since making his debut for them in 2003, moving into the upper echelons of the cricketing world during 2005-07 with several appearances for England at both Test and One-Day International level. He enjoyed Championship success with Durham in 2008 and 2009, and remains on the fringe of the national team.

I assume all three were born in the (now closed) Poole Hospital to the south of the modern-day Nunthorpe – though I stand to be corrected.

Why Langbaurgh? (NZ558117)

For as long as anyone can remember, somewhat indistinct areas of what is now known as ‘Cleveland’ have been known by the ancient name of ‘Langbaurgh’. ‘Redcar and Cleveland’ – basically eastern Cleveland, from Redcar to Staithes – has been especially linked to the term. This odd-sounding, strangely-spelt placename is a funny old concoction, and I can’t be the only north-easterner who hadn’t a clue where it came from – until, that is, I made a concerted effort to find out.

It transpires that the name comes from the ‘village’ of the same name a little to the north of Great Ayton – which, ironically, now lies a few yards over the border in North Yorkshire. I say ‘village’, but there’s not really very much there, and one wonders how the heck it ever came to lend its name to the huge tracts of land which lie to the north and east.

The answer seems to lie in the geological feature which overlooks the village to the north, namely, Langbaurgh Ridge. It lies bang on the North Yorkshire border, and derives its name from the words ‘Lang’ (long) and ‘Beorge’ (hill). Turns out that this ‘long-hill’ has been an ancient meeting point since the Viking era – in other words, the administrative centre of the local ‘wapentake’. And this was one big wapentake, extending and including everything on the map from Middlesbrough down to Whitby. For centuries, the terms ‘Langbaurgh’ and ‘Cleveland’ (pre-1974 version) were pretty much interchangeable.

In time, bits of it were hacked off and subdivided. But ‘Langbaurgh’ lived on long into the modern age as an administrative area, in the absence, even, of anything much so-named ‘on the ground’. It was even resurrected in 1974 as the name of a non-metropolitan district of the newly-created ‘County of Cleveland’. In 1996, the area in question was re-branded as ‘Redcar and Cleveland’.

So will we now be able to finally shake off the curious old placename?

Roseberry Topping (NZ579126)

When it comes to ranking the North-East’s many landmarks, Cleveland’s Roseberry Topping would surely make everybody’s Top Ten.  Even before the dramatic geological slip of a century ago which gave it its lopsided look, the hill was a prominent and popular feature of the landscape.  Forming an isolated limb of the area of the North York Moors known as the Cleveland Hills, Roseberry Topping has been admired – and sometimes revered – for centuries.

Whilst a mere molehill alongside its Swiss look-alike, the Matterhorn, the pride of Cleveland looks a good deal loftier than its 1,049 feet (320m).  It is not even the highest fell of the Moors, though it may as well be, such is its fame.  Quite apart from its shape, its composition is not difficult to discern, at least for the trained eye.  Formed from sandstone laid down in the Jurassic period (165-208 million years ago) it is actually one of the youngest hills of its kind in the country.  Whilst all around has been ground down by the glacial flows of successive ice ages and blown away by the weather, the harder sandstone (gritstone) cap has held firm to leave us with the prominence we see today.  Beneath the bare, graffiti-carved peak, there lie layers of alum rock (at its base), ironstone, then strata of fossil-ridden clays and shales before its hardy peak.  Until a little before the outbreak of the First World War, though, the shape of the hill looked a good deal more formal.  But a combination, probably, of the mining activity of man and a geological fault brought half the fellside tumbling down one noisy summer night.  A decade later another mini-slide occurred, and the terrain is still thought to be a little ‘tender’ today.

If, now, Roseberry Topping sticks out, quite literally, like a sore thumb, then its former, more conical form, drew at least as much attention from all who cast their eyes upon her previously.  Most especially, perhaps, in ancient times.  A Bronze Age hoard was found hidden on its slopes in the nineteenth century (now in Sheffield City Museum), and it was certainly occupied in the Iron Age – as is evidenced by the faint remains of huts and enclosures from the period, dated, via pottery shards and pollen, to around 110BC. 

The name itself has a complex derivation.  It comes at least partly from the Viking period, whose people seem to have taken a particular liking to the fell.  To find the very root of ‘Roseberry’ we have to begin with the Old Norse Óðin’s boerg (Odin’s rock or crag – Odin being the chief god of Norse paganism).  The name then passed through a myriad of corruptions before finally settling for some time on ‘Ouseberry’.  The initial ‘R’ was picked up, it is said, from the ‘r’ of the word ‘under’ in the old village name of Newton-under-Ouseberry’ (now Newton-under-Roseberry).  Even the word ‘Topping’ comes from the Old Norse word toppen, meaning ‘hill’.  It was common for the Vikings to make offerings to the greatest of their gods at prominent high hills, which thereafter often picked up the godly moniker.  Other theories regarding the name exist, one suggesting that it may in part derive from the ancient word ross (meaning heath or common), combined with bury (or burh, meaning a fortified place) – but these arguments are rather thin.

It is likely that even as early as the Viking Age Roseberry Topping was used for navigational purposes by seafarers.  And among both sailors and farmers alike the following rhyme became popular for predicting a storm:

When Roseberry Topping wears a cap,

Let Cleveland then beware of a clap!

Among the many hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of folk who have traversed its slopes and conquered its modest summit, the most renowned must surely be the explorer Captain James Cook.  Born a few miles to the north in a cottage at Marton (now a suburb of Middlesbrough) in 1728, he moved to a farm near Great Ayton in 1736.  Aireyholme Farm, in the shadow of Roseberry Topping, remained his home for nine years, where he attended the village school at Ayton before moving on to help his father run the farm from 1741.  He would spend his spare time wandering the fells around his home, with the summit of Roseberry Topping itself little more than half an hour’s brisk scramble.  It is generally believed that it was these rambles which engendered in the young lad the spirit of adventure which would one day take him to the other side of the world.  When he was 16 he moved to Staithes on the Yorkshire coast, and thereafter onto Whitby, where his great career of exploration would begin to flourish.

In the late Victorian era the Roseberry Ironstone Company opened mines on the southern side of the hill and worked the seams there for a few short years.  The Tees Furnace Company revisited the site a little later, whose activity was superseded by that of Burton & Sons during 1906-1926 – employing around 200 men at one point.

For many years, too, the hill formed part of a private gaming estate – the fine old shooting box / shelter can still be visited on its south-western approaches.  Now, however, Roseberry Topping forms part of the North York Moors National Park, is looked after by the National Trust and is visited daily in sizeable numbers by the general public.  Additionally, a spur of the popular long-distance walk, the Cleveland Way, runs to the summit.  To add to its list of ‘titles’ the hill has also been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is listed as being of national importance in the Geological Conservation Review.  Of major interest in this regard are the aforementioned fossils, and lots of them – over seventy species in all (both plant and animal), suggesting a saltmarsh-like habitat during the Jurassic period.

With the passage of time several of the hill’s features have disappeared.  A hermitage was once to be found near the summit, and what was described as a “small smith’s forge” hewn out of the rock seems no longer to be evident.  St.Winifred’s (or Wilfred’s) Needle, a small cleft in the rocks – again near the summit – has also disappeared amidst the mining activity of the recent past.

Springs and wells have featured prominently in the myths and legends surrounding Roseberry Topping.  The ‘Cold Well’ marked on the present-day OS map a few hundred metres to the south of the summit is probably the very same watery feature once known as St.Oswald’s Well, whose waters were once thought to be able to predict the fate of a seriously sick person by the casting in of an article of their clothing.  If it sank they were doomed, if it floated they would live.  In earlier accounts of the well it was thought to have curative effects on diseases of the eye.  William Camden, in his celebrated Britannia, however, places this magical damp spot near the summit itself, where a spring once flowed from a huge rock – and there is a myth to go with this, spring, too, it being the spot where a former prince of Northumbria was supposed to have drowned.

The hill can be approached from several directions by foot, the most common trails being from Newton-under-Roseberry to the west-by-north-west, the car park beyond Gribdale Terrace to the south-east, or Great Ayton to the south-west.  All walks are admirable at all times of the year and relatively straightforward.  The 360° views are excellent reward for minimum effort, and there are plenty of diversions to be enjoyed – the most notable of all, perhaps, being Captain Cook’s Monument on Easby Moor to the south-by-south-east.  There is, too, a great diversity of countryside and townscapes all about.  Great Ayton, Guisborough and the great sprawl of industrial Teesside dominate to the north and west (with a hint of North Sea, too), whilst miles of unbroken moorland lie to the south and east.  Woods and plantations dot the landscape, and quarry and mine workings – for ironstone, whinstone, alum and jet – have left their not too intrusive marks on the lower flanks of the fell.

The multitude of smaller diversions all help to add to the area’s undoubted charm.  The moorland all about provide much of interest to the budding naturalist, and whilst strolling Great Ayton Moor to the east one may be tempted to take in those ancient enclosures, cairns and field systems shown on the large scale OS map.  And the memory of Captain Cook, of course, casts a large shadow over the vicinity of Roseberry Topping.  Aireyholme Farm nestles snugly to the south of the summit, his monument sits across the gentle folds a little further in the distance, and the pretty village of Great Ayton thrives on its connections with the man’s childhood.  Here the visitor will find the ‘Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum’, a statue of a young James Cook, a memorial built on the site of Cook’s father’s house, and All Saints Parish Church where many of the Cook family are buried.

For a bit of everything at such close proximity to civilisation, Roseberry Topping is truly one of the region’s finest tourist attractions.

[This article first appeared in Aspects of North-East History, Volume 2, available at www.lulu.com/spotlight/historymick ]

The Guisborough Helmet (NZ580158)

(Thanks to Prioryman at Wikipedia)

The item of Roman cavalry headgear known as The Guisborough Helmet was found at Barnaby Grange Farm, a little to the west of the town after which it was named in August 1864. Like the recently discovered Crosby Garrett Helmet, it was found buried in a flattened state in total isolation from other Roman remains, which has led experts to suggest it was interred as a votive offering by an ex-soldier.

When it was originally found – during excavations for a road underpass beneath a railway line – it could be neither identified for what it was, nor an accurate estimation given as to its age. The copper-alloy piece was at first thought to be a breastplate, and that it was perhaps Celtic or Anglo-Saxon.  It was not properly identified as a third century Roman helmet until as late as 1878 after its donation to the British Museum by the landowner Frederick Greenwood. It was then restored, and now sits on display in the museum itself.

No one seems to know whether the head-piece was purely ceremonial, or if it was also used in battle – but it is undoubtedly one of the region’s greatest archaeological treasures.

The First Teessiders (NZ611138)

© Copyright MichaelGraham and licensed for reuse under this Creative CommonsLicence.

Highcliffe Nab is a rocky outcrop of the Cleveland Hills, a spot which offers spectacular views in all directions – with its bare northern face staring down directly into the town of Guisborough a mile or so distant (as illustrated above). It rises to an impressive 310m above sea level – or 1,017 ft in old money – and is currently a highlight of the Cleveland Way long-distance footpath.


It is now known as the site where the very earliest traces of human activity have been uncovered across the whole of Teesside. And all as a result of the efforts of a couple of amateur archaeologists who, in the 1990s, uncovered more than 2,000 worked flints from the Nab dating from 6,000 to 3,200 years BC (Mesolithic). Norman and Patricia Harbord had the distinction of pushing the area’s traceable history back into the era of the hunter gatherer, when our ancestors required a lofty perch from which to observe the migration of herds of wild animals.

Subsequent poking about around the site has produced hundreds more similar finds, as well as the remains of fires – indicating that meat processing and temporary camps were to be found thereabouts; though no evidence has been found of permanent settlement. The Nab may also have been used as a beacon point.

As a further point of interest, the image above shows a rust-coloured seam of ironstone running vertically through the cliff. It is the proliferation of outcrops like Highcliffe Nab in this part of the world, of course, that gives the area – Cleveland, or ‘Cliff-land’ – its name.

Joseph Whitehead (NZ615160)

One of Canada’s greatest railway pioneers, Joseph Whitehead was born in Guisborough in 1814. He began his engineering career very young, reportedly serving as a fireman on Stephenson’s famous Locomotion in the 1820s, before progressing to railway construction – most notably having a hand in the Caledonian Railway in Scotland.

He made the bold move to Canada in the late 1840s, dragging his young family with him, where he helped build sections of the Great Western and Grand Trunk Railways and many more besides. Whitehead also dabbled in politics, becoming mayor for Clinton, Ontario, and serving as a Liberal MP in the 1^st Canadian Parliament during 1867-72.

He was an entrepreneur, too, building a sawmill, among other things. Sensationally, in 1877, he brought the very first steam locomotive to the Canadian prairie provinces when he bought the Countess of Dufferin and transported it to its new home by boat up the Red River to Winnipeg. The train is today a museum piece in the city.

Whitehead eventually retired to Clinton, Ontario, and died there in 1894 – aged 80 and a very long way from his native parish. His daughter, Charlotte, became a pioneer female doctor; and his gt-gt-granddaughter, Val Meredith, served as a Canadian MP as recently as 1993-2004.

The Scattering of Gisborough Priory (NZ618161)

(with thanks to Nez202 at Wikipedia)

After Henry VIII had finished with his Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, there was a fair bit of unclaimed worked masonry lying around the countryside. Though not all of the nation’s monastic concerns were demolished and recycled, over time a fair few were. Gisborough Priory is fairly typical in this respect.

Formally ‘dissolved’ in April 1540, it was not properly surrendered to the king’s men until December of that year, making it one of the last institutions of its kind to be handed over. There was a plan of sorts to convert the old place into a secular college, but it never came to fruition – and the buildings were almost completely flattened soon afterwards. A certain Thomas Legh was given permission to do so and the pieces “carried away”.

The Chaloners eventually bought the site, moving into what was left of the complex before relocating to their new mansion, Old Gisborough Hall, in the late 17^th century. The site underwent further clearance work at this time, and the grounds redeveloped as formal gardens for the Chaloners’ new home.

Victorian historian John Walker Ord lamented the loss of the old priory and the way in which it was carelessly recycled in and around the nearby town:

I have seen with my own eyes broken pillars and pedestals of this august pile desecrated to the vile uses of gateposts, stands for rainwater casks, and stepping-stones over a common sewer. A richly ornamented doorway of the venerable priory forms the entrance to a privy. I have beheld with sorrow, shame, and indignation, the richly ornamented columns and carved architraves of God's temple supporting the thatch of a pig-house.

Other fragments found their way into a folly at Hardwick Hall estate, near Sedgefield – quite a distance – and goodness knows where else if the truth be known…

  

Moorsholm’s Mysteries (NZ689146 & thereabouts)

Well, not so much ‘mysteries’, more ‘oddities’, really. Take, for example, the fact that the village’s most famous historical relic is its set of watery features known as the ‘Moorsholm Docks’ – despite the sleepy settlement’s decidedly landlocked situate.

OK, then, so they’re not real ‘docks’, but more accurately a set of half a dozen sunken water troughs which lie against a boundary wall at the northern end of the village. A curious sight in themselves, regardless of their ambitious name. One can only assume that some joker first coined the phrase many years ago and it stuck. Picture a dozen or so cows or horses nestling up against the man-made waterway and you can just about see how the analogy was made. 

(picture courtesy of Chris Twigg of ‘Hidden Teesside’ – see here)

Then there are the strange-sounding pubs that exist, or have existed, in the village. What was formally The Plough is now the Toad Hall Arms – and no one seems to be able to explain the odd new title. Then there’s the (fairly) nearby Jolly Sailor … in the middle of the moors? And, furthermore, there used to be another pub called The Station hereabouts – despite the planned railway line never actually being built!

And, yes, that planned and abandoned railway link still, sort of, survives. The remains (for what they are) usually being referred to as ‘Paddy Waddell’s Railway’, after the guy behind the failed plan.

As if that isn’t enough, the nearby Freebrough Hill is the burial place of King Arthur, don’t you know?

Grinkle Tunnel and Station (c.NZ740177)

The railway connection between Middlesbrough and Whitby along the Cleveland coast has long since been abandoned. It is, perhaps, a project which should have never left the drawing board if the truth be known. Victorian verve and ambition took the thin black line winding around natural obstacles and, at times, perilously close to the sea – but it can now only be traced as far south as the Boulby Potash Mines. The remainder to the east and south was dismantled around 1960 and given over to a coastal footpath.

The easternmost stretch of the surviving line, from Skinningrove to Boulby, was closed, too, at this time, but was revived in the mid 1970s when Boulby Potash mine opened. It is used solely for freight, the passenger stations remaining closed (many having been demolished). One such stopping-off point was Grinkle Station, to the south-west of present-day Easington where the tracks emerge from Grinkle Tunnel. Track and tunnel alike first saw light of day in the early 1880s after almost two decades of confused planning and awkward construction. Originally known as Easington Station and Tunnel, they were renamed ‘Grinkle’ in 1904.

The station was the first on the line to be closed in 1939, the line was lifted in the early 1960s … then relaid a decade later in 1974 to enable minerals to be transported from Boulby Mine to Skinningrove and onwards. It is still in use today.

More info and pics available here.

Boulby’s Underground World (NZ761183)

Boulby is home to the second deepest mine in Europe – its 1,400m (4,600ft) depths being a mere 40-odd metres short of those of the Pyhäsalmi Mine in Finland.  Construction began there in 1969, and it began giving up its treasure – potash – in 1973.  It supplies more than half of the UK’s requirements of the stuff (which is used in agricultural fertiliser), with rock salt being harvested, too, as a by-product.

The mine is, however, perhaps more famously known for its underground laboratory.  Due entirely to the depth of its workings, boffins run two very expensive-sounding items of equipment near the foot of the mine, namely, the ZEPLIN-III and DRIFT-II dark matter detectors.  If you’re expecting a layman’s explanation of the nature and importance of this strange-sounding and invisible material, then I’m sorry to disappoint.  Try Wikipedia or the BBCwebsite instead – where, at the latter, you will find a TV report from Boulby.

But it’s clearly important work.  And this remote outpost on the Cleveland coast is pretty privileged to be host to such a barrage of expensive equipment – for the DRIFT-II is one of only two such gadgets in operation worldwide.  And why a mine shaft, you may wonder?  Well, at more than a kilometre below ground and surrounded by solid rock, the delicate equipment is safely shielded from interfering radiation from outer space.

It’s all been running for several years now, though I don’t think they’ve found much.

More information here.

The End of Our World (NZ783190)

(Aerialphoto of Staithes and the Harbour by Neil Reed)

The above photograph, taken from the north, shows the sleepy village of Staithes, North Yorkshire. The watercourse, entering the picture from top right, is Roxby (or Staithes) Beck, and is the boundary between the aforementioned county to the left and ‘Redcar and Cleveland’ to the right. In other words, the bulky promontory on right of picture is the very last piece of ‘North-East England’ for the purposes of this blog.


It’s known as Cowbar Nab, sheltering, as it does, the tiny hamlet of Cowbar on the ‘North-East side’ of the beck (hidden from view). There is little to trouble the historians hereabouts, though the buildings are old enough (there’s a splendid picture here) – though it seems to have been the site of the local lifeboat station in its various incarnations for nigh on 150 years (and, indeed, still is – see here).

What a beautiful spot at which to about-turn and head back into the rest of the region…

Beowulf’s Burial Place? (NZ749195)

Beowulf, that shady mythical figure from Dark Age Scandinavia, has found himself transformed, almost, into a great British hero thanks to that famous Old English poem. Thing is, he wasn’t from these shores – it being likely that the yarn was re-spun by early Anglo-Saxon immigrants to suit their own tastes (and surroundings) in the early days of their ‘invasion’ of our shores.

The original is most firmly set in modern-day Denmark and Sweden, yet old historians and antiquarians have persisted in giving the story an English twist. The most stubborn myth concerns the great man’s burial – which followed his death in battle with a dragon. It is said that he was laid to rest by his people, the Geats, in a prominent tumulus on high ground overlooking the sea.

Now there is no real reason to suppose that this would have occurred anywhere else other than in the land of the Geats themselves, i.e. southern Sweden. However, more than one ‘expert’ this side of the North Sea has ventured to suggest (principally by fiddling about unconvincingly with place-names) that the spot in question is Boulby Cliff on the Redcar and Cleveland coast.

So we’re talking about a mythical hero from Scandinavia being buried several hundred miles away from his homeland on a cliff top in North-East England.  Mmm.  Mind you, Boulby Cliff certainly measures up at 660ft (the highest sea-cliff on the eastern seaboard), is within spitting distance of the recent Anglo-Saxon Street House Treasure find and is, as it happens, capped by an ancient tumulus.

I wonder…

The Street House Treasure (NZ736196)

In 2004, excavation work began on one of the most remarkable archaeological finds ever made in England.  At Street House Farm, a little to the north-east of Loftus, was unearthed a 7^th century burial site containing the remains of an Anglo-Saxon princess.

Over the course of the next few years, experts painstakingly retrieved the grave goods and unravelled the story of the site, until the goodies themselves were put on display at Kirkleatham Museum in the spring of 2011. Some of the pieces are associated with a rare – and high status – ‘bed burial’, in which a female body was laid to rest on a wooden bed accompanied by gold jewellery. A gold pendant (said to be “unparalleled” in the Anglo-Saxon world), glass beads, pottery, iron knives, belt buckles (among other objects) formed the priceless core of the finds from a site which, in all, included over 100 grave plots.

After protracted debate (including mention in the House of Commons), a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £274,000 helped the local authority/museum in their purchase of the treasure from the Crown, meaning that it could be retained in the region.

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Honest, it was THIS Big! (c.NZ713203)

On 17^th February 2003, 40 year-old angler Val Fletcher was casting for little fishes from the beach at Skinningrove. She baited her line with squid and hoped for a nibble – perhaps from a mackerel or something equally as undramatic.

She got a bite all right, but it was no tiddler; for it was a 11½ft, 140lb oarfish (aka the King of Herrings) – and it took her a good 40 minutes to reel it in, aided by her partner, the appropriately named Robert Herrings.  Though the size of the fish was on the large side, it was a minnow by oarfish standards: they can reach 50ft+. Anyway, the 5ft 4in, eight stone woman beached the monster, dragged it home and left it outside for a couple of days for the locals to gawp at. No one was able to identify the specimen for some time.

Oarfish are incredibly rare – especially live specimens. They are the oceans’ longest bony fish, and prefer warmer climes and deeper seas.  One hadn’t been caught anywhere in the world since 1996 (off the US coast) – with previous UK finds including two at Whitby in 1759 & 1981 and one off Northumberland in 1794. Val is thought to have been the first person to have landed one with a rod and line.

When word finally got round, marine biologists were keen to examine the creature. By then, though, it had already been sliced up into steaks and shoved in Ms Fletcher’s deep freeze.