LAY OF THE LAND
The Broxa Spring – Broxa
The hamlet of Broxa is located five miles to the west of Scarborough.
Take a look at any OS map and it will usually mark the location of several wells and springs. Many of these will be unnamed, while a few will have descriptive names such as the ‘Cold Well’, or perhaps refer to the owner e.g. ‘Peggy West’s Well’. Rarer still are those marked as holy wells, or with names referring to some folklore character such as ‘Robin Hood’s Well’. A small number of springs and wells are named after their location or the nearest village, which might not be unexpected, however in some cases the ‘village well’ naming seems to point to the well having some unusual property. The Ebbing and Flowing Well at Giggleswick was referred to in an old document as the ‘Giggleswick Spring’. ‘Redmire well’ was a healing sulphur spring, Cawton spring well is a holy well, Newtondale Spring is an very impressive chalybeate spring. This type of naming seems to point to a ‘special’ spring which the village was known for over a wider local area. When ‘Broxa Spring’ was noted on the OS map it was decided to visit the site and test this theory.
(continue rading …)The Old Wife of Lund Ridge
Lund Ridge is located 4 miles to the north of Helmsley, on the North York Moors.
The first edition OS map (1857) shows a stone called the “Old Wife” located alongside a footpath running across the moorland on Lund Ridge. The stone does not appear on later maps, but overlaying the old and new maps provided a grid reference SE61062 91175. A visit to the site in 2016 found no stone at the map location, however a short standing stone was noted by the road side 30m further west. It was also noted that a track cut through the heather had exposed the land surface where the Old Wife Stone originally stood, and this had revealed a spread of stones – possibly the remains of a cairn. Some confirmation of this came from the Historic Environment Record map which shows a large cairnfield across the southern end of Lund Ridge.
(Continue reading …)
