Yorkshire history
History
Ravenser Odd: The Medieval Yorkshire Town the Sea Swallowed Whole
A market town with two MPs in Parliament and more trade than Hull now lies under the Humber, and nobody has found the exact spot yet.
Stand at Spurn Point on a clear day, and...
History
Mischief Night Yorkshire: The Bonfire-Eve Tradition When Children Ran the Streets
Mischief Night Yorkshire children grew up with fell on 4 November, the night before Bonfire Night, when gates went missing, door knockers were tied shut, and adults mostly shrugged.
Ask anyone who grew up in...
History
Nostell Priory’s Secret Servants’ Furniture: Chippendale Nobody Sees
The house near Wakefield holds the finest Chippendale collection in Britain, and some of the best pieces were never meant to be seen by guests at all.
Most visitors who walk through Nostell Priory head...
History
Wade’s Causeway: The Yorkshire Moor Road Nobody Can Agree On
A giant supposedly built it for his wife's cow. Archaeologists spent a century calling it Roman. Neither answer has actually been settled.
Wheeldale Moor, deep in the North York Moors, holds one of the strangest...
History
Things We Miss About Old Yorkshire, and the Real Stories Behind Them
Not another photo gallery with a caption and a sigh. Seven specific things old Yorkshire lost, with the actual dates, and one thing that never left at all.
Every regional paper eventually runs the same...
History
St Robert’s Cave: The Knaresborough Murder That Waited 13 Years
A shoemaker vanished from Knaresborough in 1745. Nobody found him for thirteen years, and when they finally did, he was in a hermit's cave.
St Robert's Cave sits cut into the limestone cliffs above the...
History
Ripley Castle: The Night Trooper Jane Held Cromwell at Gunpoint
A teenage girl from the same family sat up all night with a pistol in the castle library, and Oliver Cromwell was on the other side of the door.
Ripley Castle sits a few miles...
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...
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