North Yorkshire

Skir Hands and Schloof Feet

Skir or kir-handed people i.e. left-handed people are not safe for a traveller to meet on a Tuesday morning. On other days it is fortunate to meet them.

It is unlucky for a traveller on a Monday morning to meet a man with ‘schloof’ or flat feet; but mischief may be averted by returning home, eating and drinking, and starting afresh on one’s way.

Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Border. William Henderson 1886

Image Credit – The British Library

Kir may have it’s origins in the Danish word for left handed keite.

In our corner of the world left handed people are commonly known as Cuddy Wifters

John Piper made me do it – Romanesque North Yorkshire

Some time ago a John Piper image had led me to visit the Church of St. Michael at Barton-le-street. The village is located on the B1257, the ‘le-street’ element of the village name indicates that it is on the course of a Roman road, in this case the Roman road from Malton to Hovingham.

I had previously visited the church during the winter, the weather was terrible and the church was locked. I was completely overwhelmed by the carvings in the porch and knew that I would have to return in the summer when the church was open.

The church was rebuilt in 1871 by Perkins & Sons of Leeds. Nikolaus Pevsner describes it as a sumptuous small Norman church rebuilt without and restraint. Rita Wood remarks that many small Romanesque churches draw gasps of amazement for the amount of carving encrusting them, but there seems to be even more carving than usual here, of high quality and great interest.

The arcaded corbel tables and string course from the original church have been moved into the porch and body of the church. Everywhere you look there are beautiful carvings including Victorian carvings in the Romanesque style.

But a Norman pulpit takes some stomaching – Nikolaus Pevsner

The Victorian corbel table on the exterior of the church contains some beautiful carvings. It makes you wonder whether the sculpted faces are of some of the people who were involved in the restoration.

I don’t really have the expertise to accurately describe what is going on in this incredible church. If you are in the area I’d definitely recommend a visit. If you want to know more about the church it’s worth taking a look at Dav Smith’s paper, St Michael and All Angels, Barton-le-Street: an Important Scheme of Romanesque Sculpture which can be found here

Sources

John Piper’s Photographs of Yorkshire

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: York & the East Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave. 1997

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. Yorkshire Archaeological Society Occasional Paper No.9. 2012

Disintegration

I currently having a bit of a clear-out. I found a few CDs that I used to backed-up my photos back in the early 2000’s. Quite a few of the images are corrupted, some beyond recognition. The images are of prehistoric sites in Northumberland, Cumbria, Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

I was thinking about how these corrupted images and their subjects perhaps evoke notions of the time, the illusion of permanence and the ephemeral nature of recording such places.

Looking through the images brought to mind The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski. The images are about 2 decades old, the same amount of time it took for Basinski’s audio tapes to degraded before he used them in his composition.

When is a fossil not a fossil?

I took a wander with Carl Mole down to Port Mulgrave yesterday and spent some time on the beach looking for fossils.

I came across this interesting-looking fossil, I’d not seen not seen anything similar before so I took a few photos. When I got home I had a look through Dean Lomax’s guide, Fossils of the Whitby Coast. It turns out that it’s a Pseudo fossil known as a cone-in-cone structure.

The cone-in-cone structure is literally what it says; several cone-shaped structures placed one within the other. The cones are often orientated vertically. They are believed to form through the growth of fibrous crystals.

Fossils of the Whitby Coast – Dean Lomax

If you have an interest in the fossils of the North Yorkshire coast I would highly recommend Dean’s guidebook. It’s not a very large book but it’s very well written and packed with photographs and illustrations, it has never let me down.

Esk Valley News Quarterly – Folklore, Witchcraft, Traditions

I bought a copy of this publication yesterday, it’s wonderful, I’d highly recommend it.

I bought my copy from the excellent Book Corner in Saltburn. Its available as a printed book or digital format, the printed version is selling out quickly so you may have to hunt down a copy. Further details can be found here.