A walk around Eyam Moor and Eyam village

Malcolm on the edge - up on the moors

Heather nearby

sheep in the fields

don't eat this!  Autumn toadstools

coming out of the woods

Malcolm gets a Derbyshire oatcake with cheese and bacon...

...at the Barrel Inn - the highest pub in Derbyshire

village stocks outside Eyam Hall

plague cottages

Saxon Cross

The story of the plague village in Eyam church stained glass window

picturesque corner of Eyam

Today Malcolm and I headed off to Derbyshire.  We did a 2 hour walk starting on Eyam Moor and crossing moorland before dropping down into the wooded Bretton Clough and finishing at the Barrel Inn at Bretton, Derbyshire's 'highest pint'.  It was very nice inside and even had a roaring fire at one end, though we were quite warm after our walk.

Then we walked around the village of Eyam, famous because in 1665 when the plague broke out there (infected fleas were in a box of fabric from London)the villagers quarantined themselves for 14 months to spare spreading the plague to nearby places.  250 villagers died leaving only a handful of survivors.  Today it is a pretty village with notices on all the buildings that had plague victims, etc.  There are stocks outside Eyam Hall and a ring which once tethered bulls and bears in the old bull ring.

Lincolnshire Show

For KPS - this was just like Country Comes To Town - but with

Jousting.  And Ferret racing!

 

One of the displays was birds of prey - this is an owl

a winking owl

cute country teas caravan...

...and the cute and tasty food

a bodger

ferret racing

a ferret - or possibly a polecat

Quentin gets to drive a tank

One of the 4 knights jousting - the local favourite

The black knight - the baddie

knights in action, jousting

 

 

On Sunday we drove into Lincolnshire to near Lincoln where there was a show and games event taking place.  There were all kinds of activities taking place in the arena of which the jousting was the best in our opinion.

 

Ferret racing was also fun.  They didn't actually race as such being sleepy creatures but they did make their way along the pipes and popped out at the other end.

 

Quentin had fun in a tank and we all liked the quaint tea room caravan with its mismatched china and teapots full of coffee!  If you think I am getting fixated with food on this trip - check out Faith's blog  www.whatieatinlondon.blogspot.com

Sherwood Forest Through the Ages

Friar Tuck does not fancy 12th century surgery

Civil War encampment

German from WW1

 

Roundheads and Cavaliers

Copper Age man

Saxons

Malcolm chats to some 13th Century mercenaries

archery lessons

right in the eyes!

another pub lunch...

...we ate everything!!

On Saturday we went to Sherwood Forest for an event called Sherwood through the ages, where 25 different enactment groups from the copper age to modern day soldiers were set up in the woodland - on a circular walk around the Major Oak.  (That's an ancient oak tree associated with Robin Hood).

All the groups, Romans, Vikings, Saxons etc  had their own encampments and could answer any questions about the era, their tools and weapons etc.  Faith, Quentin and Malcolm had a go at archery and we browsed the market stalls before heading to the nearby village of Edwinstowe for a good old pub lunch.

Even Further Up North - County Durham and the North Yorkshire Moors

Escomb Saxon church - built about 670

Church and church yard are in a circular enclosure - the church is built over a pagan burial mound/site

The builders used stone from a ruined Roman Fort, this arch was the entry to the bath house

Larger window added at a later date

Even lunchtime pubs have a history - Malcolm is reading the story: the song 'My Grandfather's Clock' was written by someone staying here who was told how the clock stopped when the publican died.

Narrow roads going up to the North York Moors

stone walls and autumn berries

You can't go past coffee with scones, cream and jam

I was hoping that we might turn up some information about my great-great-grandfather.  He died aged 28 having been run over by wagons at Whitton Park Ironworks in County Durham.  Family records tell that he was buried in nearby Escomb Church so I was hoping for better luck with the gravestones, something on the lines of '...beloved son of...' as I don't know who his parents were.

Interestingly Escomb Church is fascinating in its own right, it is the oldest, non-altered Saxon Church in England.  We were lucky that the vicar (presumably) was in the church and was able to tell us all about the history of the church and local information.  It was built when the first Celtic Monks came to Britain on the site of a Pagan sacred place (excavations found 2 skeletons below the foundations of the church).

Unfortunately no gravestone with my ancestors name on.  The vicar told us that there is a Victorian graveyard up on the hill which we checked out but it was amazingly overgrown so we gave up on that too.  So genealogically no further on!

Lunch was at the George in Piercebridge, a village where we inspected the remains of a Roman bridge, recently uncovered. History is everywhere in England!

On the way back to Stapleford we went through the narrow lanes of the North York Moors, stopping for a cream tea - as you do!
There endeth the trip up north.

Up north - Last of the Summer Wine Country

Owlet hall

Clegg Moor

Whittaker Hamlet - last known abode of my grandma's aunty...

...now very desirable properties

Whittaker woods

Hollingworth Lake

Whittaker Hamlet from the track to  Hollingworth Lake with Blackstone Edge behind

Hollingworth lake

On the Roman Road to Blackstone Edge

This paved track is 2.000 years old!

It's mainly overgrown, the drainage ditch here is in the middle, there's another at each side

The Aggin stone, a medieval marker up on the moors

In the mist on Blackstone Edge - our car is parked on the faint road curving in the background

We decided to combine walking with trying to discover more about some of my elusive ancestors so drove up north and across the Pennines from Yorkshire to Lancashire.

I had wanted to see if there was any trace of my grandma's aunty, Mary Ellen Elliott.  (Grandma was named after her).  Mary Ellen and her siblings were orphaned and while the others stayed in the mill town of Rochdale, she was adopted by a farming family named Butterworth who lived in a hamlet called Whittaker.  In 1881, 17 year old Mary Ellen has a baby daughter, Ellen, but after that disappears from any records that I can trace.  For those who do genealogy you know how addictively frustrating this is!

We went to the nearest town to Whittaker, Littleborough.  Here we searched the churchyard for graves but frustratingly they were all laid flat and were grass and moss covered.  We had to give up on the idea that we might find her gravestone so went for a coffee and toasted tea cake in the tea shop.  This little town and the surrounding area were so evocative of last of the Summer Wine (for those who've watched it)- I was expecting Nora Batty!  

We had a walk we'd downloaded from the internet which went past Whittaker so spent the rest of the morning walking through the woods, past mysterious Owlet hall and up onto the lower parts of Cleggs Moor.  The Whittaker hamlet where a few families eked out an existence farming, weaving cotton and stone cutting in Victorian times are now modern dwellings, but the groundsman told us that it is very cold and isolated there in Winter.  In the 1880's it would have been quite grim.  Back through the woods to Hollingworth Lake and a lunch of soup - the weather wasn't cold but everywhere was damp and misty, especially up on the summit of the moors where we went next.

On the Halifax road there's a spot to park and follow an old Roman Road to where the Pennine Way crosses Blackstone Ridge. The road is well preserved though overgrown across it's width.  the higher we went, the denser the mist and on the Edge itself we couldn't see down to where we'd left the car!  On a clear day you'd have an amazing view but we just had the evocative, slightly spooky mist!  Then we went to Oldham where we spent the night before going further up north....