The North York Moors. Paddy Dillon

this area has often been, and remains to this day, a working landscape. The moors are scarred and quarried in places by man’s search for mineral resources, and the heather cover requires year-round management for the sport of grouse shooting. Walkers with enquiring minds will quickly realise that the human history and settlement of the moors, even at its highest points, stretches back over thousands of years. Our own enjoyment of the moors, in contrast, may be nothing more than a transient pleasure.

      Walkers follow an old railway trackbed above Rosedale (Walk 30)

Brief history of the moors

      Early settlement

      The first people to roam across the North York Moors were Mesolithic nomads, eking out an existence as hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago. Swampy lowlands surrounded the uplands, and apart from a few flakes of flint these people left little trace of their existence. Evidence of the Neolithic settlers who followed can be seen in the mounds of stones they heaped over their burial sites, called barrows, which date back to 2000BC. Soon afterwards, from 1800BC onwards, the Beaker People and Bronze Age invaders moved into the area. They used more advanced methods of land clearance and tillage, and buried their dead in conspicuous mounds known as ‘howes’. These people exhausted the land, clearing too much forest too quickly. Minerals leached from the thin soils, so that the uplands became unproductive. Climate changes led to ground becoming waterlogged and mossy, so that tillage became impossible and scrub moorland developed. Iron Age people faced more of a struggle to survive and had to organise themselves in defensive promontory forts. Perhaps some of the linear dykes that cut across the countryside date from that time, although many structures are difficult to date with any degree of certainty.

      Roman settlement

      The Romans marched through Britain during the first century and founded a city at York. Perhaps the most important site on the North York Moors was Cawthorn Camp near Cropton, which was used as a military training ground. Although Wade’s Causeway in Wheeldale is often referred to as a Roman road, it may not be. Hadrian’s Wall kept the Picts at bay to the north, but the east coast was open to invasion by the Saxons, so the Romans built coastal signal stations in AD368 at Hartlepool, Hunt Cliff, Boulby, Goldsborough, Whitby, Ravenscar, Scarborough, Filey and Flamborough Head. Some of these sites have been lost as the cliffs have receded. By AD410 the Romans had left Britain, and the coast was clear for wave upon wave of invasions.

      Dark Age settlement

      Saxons, Angles, Danes and other invaders left their mark on the North York Moors, establishing little villages and tilling the land, mostly in the dales, as the higher ground had long since reverted to scrub. Many of these settlers were Christian, and in AD657 a monastery in the Celtic Christian tradition was founded at Whitby. Whitby Abbey was notable for one of its early lay brothers, Caedmon, who was inspired to sing, and whose words comprise the earliest written English Christian verse. During the successive waves of invasion there were times of strife, and the abbey was destroyed in AD867. Other small-scale rural monastic sites are known. Many early Christian churches were simple wooden buildings. Some of the earliest carved stone crosses date from the 10th century.

      Lilla Cross is the oldest Christian monument on the moors (Walk 40)

      Norman settlement

      A more comprehensive invasion was mounted by the Normans, who swept through the region during the 11th century. They totally reorganised society, establishing the feudal system and leaving an invaluable insight into the state of the countryside through the vast numbers of settlements and properties listed in the Domesday Book. In return for allegiance to the king, noblemen were handed vast tracts of countryside and authority over its inhabitants. Resentment and violence was rife for a time, and the new overlords were obliged to build robust castles. Many noblemen gifted large parts of their estates to religious orders from mainland Europe, encouraging them to settle in the area.

      Monastic settlement

      Monasteries and abbeys were founded in and around the North York Moors in the wake of the Norman invasion, and ruins dating from the 12th and 13th centuries still dominate the countryside. Stone quarrying was important at this time, and large-scale sheep rearing was developed, leading to the large, close-cropped pastures that feature in the dales. There were still plenty of woodlands for timber and hunting, but the moors remained bleak and barren and were reckoned to be of little worth. Early maps and descriptions by travellers simply dismissed the area as ‘black-a-moor’, yet it was necessary for people to cross the moors if only to get from place to place, and so a network of paths developed. The monasteries planted some of the old stone crosses on the moors to provide guidance to travellers. This era came to a sudden close with Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.

      Recent settlement

      Over the past few centuries the settlement of the North York Moors has been influenced by its mineral wealth and the burgeoning tourist industry. At the beginning of the 17th century an amazing chemical industry developed to extract highly prized alum from a particular type of of shale. This industry lasted two and a half centuries and had a huge impact around the cliff-bound fringes of the North York Moors. From the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries, Whitby’s fishing industry specialised in whaling, and the town benefitted greatly. The 19th century was the peak period for jet production, often referred to as Whitby Jet. Railways were built in and around the North York Moors throughout the 19th century, bringing an increase in trade and allowing easier shipment of ironstone from the moors. Railways also laid the foundation for a brisk tourist trade, injecting new life into coastal resorts whose trade and fishing fleets were on the wane. Tourism continues to be one of the most important industries in the area, and tourism in the countryside is very much dependent on walking.

      Whitby and Whitby Abbey as seen from the Whalebone Arch (Walk 44)

North York Moors industries

      Alum

      Throughout the North York Moors National Park huge piles of flaky pink shale have been dumped on the landscape, sometimes along the western fringes of the Cleveland Hills, but more especially along the coast. These are the remains of a large-scale chemical industry that thrived from 1600 to 1870. The hard-won prize was alum: a salt that could be extracted from certain beds of shale through a time-consuming process.

      Wherever the shale occurred, it was extensively quarried. Millions of tons were cut, changing the shape of the landscape, especially along the coast. Wood, and in later years coal, was layered with the shale, and huge piles were set on fire and kept burning for months, sometimes even a whole year. The burnt shale was then soaked in huge tanks of water, a process known as leaching. Afterwards, the water was drawn off and boiled, which required more wood and coal, as well as being treated with such odious substances as human urine, brought from as far away as London. As crystals of precious alum began to form, the process was completed with a purification stage before the end product was packed for dispatch.

      Alum had many uses but was chiefly in demand as a fixative for dyes, as it promoted deep colours on cloth, which became colour-fast after washing. The Italians had a virtual monopoly on the trade until the alum shale of Yorkshire was exploited from 1600. However, the local industry went into a sudden decline when other sources of alum, and more advanced dyestuffs, were discovered from 1850. The long and involved process of quarrying, burning, leaching, boiling, crystallising and purifying was replaced by simpler, cheaper and faster production methods. Two dozen sites are scattered across the landscape where the industry once flourished. Look upon these stark remains, consider the toil and labour and bear in mind that it all took place so that fine ladies and gentlemen could wear brightly coloured clothes!

      Jet

      Jet, often known as Whitby jet, has been used to create ornaments and jewellery since the Bronze Age. It is found around the North York Moors, often along the coast, but also