History
History
Pontefract Cakes: Yorkshire’s 900-Year Liquorice Secret
A small black coin, stamped with a castle, sold in nearly every corner shop in Britain for over two centuries. Almost nobody who eats one knows the town it's named after once ran 13...
History
Cottingley Fairies Yorkshire: The Hoax That Fooled the World for 60 Years
Two schoolgirls, a borrowed camera and a beck at the bottom of a Bradford garden produced five photographs that convinced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fairies were real. The Cottingley Fairies hoax ran for six...
History
Janet’s Foss, Malham: The Fairy Queen’s Waterfall in the Yorkshire Dales
A six-metre waterfall drops over a curtain of limestone tufa into a pool the colour of pale jade, twenty minutes' walk from Malham village. Local tradition has held for generations that a fairy queen...
History
Bride Stones, Todmorden: The Wedding Party the Moor Never Let Go
Half a mile of weathered millstone grit along a ridge above the Calder Valley, and a story that has run since at least 1491: a wedding party, caught in fog on the way home,...
History
Mother Shipton’s Cave, Knaresborough: England’s Oldest Tourist Attraction
A well beside the River Nidd has been turning ordinary objects to stone since long before photography existed to prove it. Mother Shipton's Cave and its Petrifying Well have been charging visitors an entry...
History
Doon Hill, Aberfoyle: The Minister Who Vanished Into the Fairy Hill
In May 1692, a Scottish minister walked up a wooded hill outside Aberfoyle and never came home. His body was found on the summit. Local tradition has held for over three hundred years that...
History
Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire: The King a Witch Turned to Stone
A king, his army and a knot of plotting knights, all turned to stone on a Cotswold ridge by a witch who never wanted him to reach the crown. The Rollright Stones have carried...
History
The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest: Robin Hood’s Tree Has Died, But It Is Still Standing
In June 2026, the RSPB confirmed what a forest full of visitors had spent the spring quietly dreading. Sherwood Forest's Major Oak, the tree traditionally cited as Robin Hood's hideout and one of the...
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