Two Whitby Stones

The Battering Stone

A large mass of blue whinstone by the road side near the east end of Whitby abbey, which the boys were won’t to batter or pelt with stones on Holy Thursday, after the usual perambulation of the parochial boundaries, the fortunate breakers, it was said, being entitled to a guinea from the parish. The custom seems almost forgotten with the cessation of the perambulation, and the stone reposes from year to year in its wonted solidity, though bearing the marks on its surface, of the juvenile assaults of former days.

The Needle

Holy stones are those artificial formations connected with the oracular ceremonies of past ages; and it is recorded that one of these uprights, called the needle stood in the vicinity of the west pier at Whitby, through the eye of which rickety children were drawn in order to strengthen them; a custom practiced in some parts to this day. Lovers also pledged themselves by joining hands through the hole, especially in the case of young mariners bound on their voyage.

Sources

A Glossary of Yorkshire word and phrases: Collected in Whitby and the neighbourhood. 1885

A Glossary of words used in Swaledale, Yorkshire 1873

Image –  ?Whitby JMW Turner c,1827 Tate Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

Cockfield Fell

Cockfield Fell is described as “one of the most important early industrial landscapes in Britain”. In addition to four Iron Age (or Romano-British) settlement enclosures, there is evidence within the landscape of early coal mines (the Bishop of Durham licensed mining here at least as early as 1303), medieval agricultural field patterns, centuries of quarrying activity, a railway line established in the 1830s and several earlier tramways All together, Cockfield Fell constitutes England’s largest Scheduled Ancient Monument, described as ‘an incomparable association of field monuments relating to the Iron settlement history and industrial evolution of a northern English County’. One reason for its preservation – unusual for a lowland fell – is that it was not subject to enclosure in the 18th or 19th centuries, perhaps due to its highly industrialised past. Source

The fell is ablaze with fragrant golden whin

The Cleveland Dyke outcrops on the fell and was quarried for roadstone.

The remains of the Gaunless Viaduct

Gaunless ME gaghenles ‘useless’ (from ON gagnlauss). The name may refer to scarcity of fish or the like. English Place-Names. Eilert Ekwall. 1959 

Coal was mined on the fell from the early medieval period until the late nineteenth century

Beehive coke ovens on the valley floor

A beautiful Cob keeps me company

Map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Many thanks to Graham Vasey for showing me around this wonderful place

Whinstone

The Redcar Memorial Clock tower was designed by John Dobson and erected in 1913 in memory of King Edward VII. It is built of red engineering brick and concrete. The plinth is made of Whinstone, making it one of the few buildings in the area that utilises this local stone.

Grey Towers in Nunthorpe, built for William Hopkins, and the former home of Arthur Dorman, is also faced with Whinstone.

The Cleveland Dyke

The Cleveland Dyke is a band of igneous rock that was injected, whilst molten, into the local rocks during the Tertiary period of geological time (approx 60 million years ago). The dyke originated in a large magma chamber beneath the Island of Mull on the west coast of Scotland and has been estimated to have taken between 1-5 days to travel to North Yorkshire.

Looking from Cliff Rigg Quarry to the Langbaurgh Ridge. The old quarry sites along the ridge can be seen between the trees. I have often wondered whether the people who lived in this area during prehistory used the Langbaurgh Ridge as a routeway from the River Tees to the moorlands. Bronze Age burials have been found in Ingleby Barwick close to the outcrop of the dyke. There are many prehistoric sites around the outcroppings on the North York Moors, particularly on Fylingdales Moor.

The dyke is mainly buried beneath glacial deposits but  outcrops at a number of locations across Cleveland and the North York Moors. Where ever the dyke outcrops it has generally been quarried away. The rock, a basaltic andesite  but popularly known as whinstone, it is a very hard rock and was ideal for road building both as a hardcore and to make setts and blocks for surfacing.

During the late 1800’s Leeds Corporation operated the quarries at Cliff Rigg just outside Great Ayton. The Middlesbrough to Whitby railway runs just beneath the quarry so it was possible to extract the stone and ship it by rail to Leeds.

Ironstone was also mined at Cliff Rigg and the surrounding area.