Reeth
Museum's Digital Image Archive has beeen
transfered to the Resource Centre in
Keld.
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| In the Footsteps of Nuns |
Sandy Carter, who is the Development Officer at Marrick Priory, was our speaker in July. The priory is an outdoor education and residential centre, but its history goes back to the 12th century when it was founded as a Benedictine nunnery.
Unlike Ellerton Priory just to the south, it escaped destruction during the marauding raids of the Scots in the 14th century but was closed two hundred years later during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. The prioress, Christabel Cowper, and sixteen nuns were evicted in 1540. The leasehold and then the ownership passed to Sir John Woodall.
The church continued to be used as a place of worship down the centuries, although it was rebuilt in 1811, incorporating some of the earlier structures. It is all that remains of the original priory, apart from some enigmatic pieces of stonework in the grounds. The last services were held there in the 1940s.
The priory was opened as an outdoor education centre in the 1970s. It offers the opportunity for young people to spend time together in a rural setting with a rich historical past. They can try a wide-range of exciting activities, such as canoeing, archery, abseiling and high ropes and most leave with unforgettable memories of their time there.
J. H. |
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| Marrick Priory |
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| The high ropes |
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| News Record: 190 Updated: 11-08-2024 14:03:21 |
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| SWAAG Wildflower walk – July 2024 |
A group of 9 met at Rukin’s car park in Keld for a short walk led by Sue Knight and Janet Bethune. The walk was about a mile in total to allow for the slow pace needed for adequate discussion of the flowers and grasses which were encountered. The group were provided with hand-lenses and a list of about 70 plants they were likely to see. The aim of the walk was to point out distinguishing features that would help people remember the plants.
We started with the common buttercup and how to separate Meadow and Creeping Buttercups and then focused on a range of grasses. The commonest was the soft, downy Yorkshire Fog. One member wondered if references to putting cows out into the “fog” and producing “fog cheese” from their milk could be a reference to this . A special plant for the northern dales was Melancholy Thistle, which put on a superb show. In spite of being a thistle, it has no spines. We also tackled a couple of ferns, with lenses out so the shape of the fronds could be checked.
Everyone managed to see the subtle differences between Male Fern and Lady Fern, the latter having a more delicate appearance! Colour was provided by the Monkey Flower, Meadowsweet and Common Spotted orchid. The sense of smell can also be used to help name a flower and the horrid smell of Woundwort and Herb Robert is not easily forgotten. We ended by testing the sense of smell on a more pleasant note by comparing Garden Mint and Water Mint, the latter having a fresher, spearminty smell.
We returned to the car park as the heavens opened and pleased that the walk had been dry. |
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| Common Spotted Orchid |
Hedge Wound Wort |
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| Small Copper on a Melancholy Thistle |
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| News Record: 189 Updated: 18-07-2024 11:21:36 |
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| A Solar Eclipse and a Viking Settlement |
We had two very different talks in our June meeting. In the first Les Knight spoke about the 1927 solar eclipse. Many SWAAG members will have spotted the yellow AA sign, commemorating the centre line of totality, as they drive into Richmond from Swaledale. There was great excitement prior to the event, the newspapers printed special supplements, the Ordnance Survey produced a map, and plans were laid to set up telescopes along the line of totality. Railway companies advertised excursions to places such as Richmond, Southport and Blackpool. LNER alone had 37 trains scheduled for the occasion. Les concluded that this was probably one of the greatest mass movements in British history, with over 3 million people being transported, by various means, to the north of England. In Richmond there were lectures, dances and whist drives to celebrate and 35,000 people went to Richmond racecourse to watch on the day. Virginia Woolf, a keen astronomer, went to Richmond too.
Sadly, from a weather point of view the 29th of June wasn’t the best of days – there was almost complete cloud cover. A plane was launched from Catterick, and a hot air balloon was blown out into the Irish Sea in its ill-fated attempt to get a better view. The best photo was obtained by the Astronomer Royal in the grounds of Giggleswick School. The headline in the Darlington and Stockton Times after the event was “The Eclipsed Eclipse”.
Alan Mills followed with a talk about his visit to the Norse settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows, on Newfoundland, in Canada. Excavated in the 1960s, by Anne Stine Ingstad, it provides conclusive evidence that the Vikings arrived in the Americas nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. The site contains the remains of eight buildings and probably supported 60 to 100 people over a 20-to-30-year period. Workshops were also found together with typical Norse artefacts. The site may not have been occupied all year round.
The Norse sagas, which were written down in the 13th century, refer to exploration west of Greenland and mention the settlement of “Vinland”. Whether this was L’Anse aux Meadows is debatable. Butternuts, which don’t grow in Newfoundland, were found during the excavation and must have come from further south where perhaps grapes might also have been growing in the wild. As yet no other confirmed Viking settlements have been found in Canada.
J.H. |
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| News Record: 188 Updated: 11-07-2024 16:20:23 |
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