Grey Towers Mansion - Nunthorpe

Just over the border in Cleveland is this gothic mansion. At first glance it looks like any victorian building in proximity to any other industrial building of that time, dark and dirty. But this is an illusion. For the building material is unique and comes from the Whinstone Ridge/dyke which cuts across the North Yorkshire Moors and was widely used for setts - cobble stones! Those cobbles along the high street in Guisborough are also of the same material. It's geological name is Basalt, a very hard and almost black volcanic rock.

Built in the 1870's for the man who designed and built the tay bridge, it also became the home of another industrialist, Mr Dorman of Dorman & Long fame. It is now converted into a number of flats.

Here, in this close up you can see the sandstone quoin stones at the edge and the much smaller and darker whinstone/basalt.

(See also Round and About The North Yorkshire Moors Voll II by Tom Scott Burns & Martin Rigg, page 120)

The Esklets

The Esklets, four km south of Westerdale in the NYMNP, is well known for being the source of the River Esk.

There used to be a farm there too. Here's my picture taken in about 1975. It was knocked down and the rubble used to create a farm track in 1978. I met the owner as he admired his new track and asked him why?, and he told told me so many people were using it, it was dangerous. So he knocked it! He also told me it hadn't been lived in since WWII, which like many buildings on the edges of the moors had been evacuated to allow the military use the moors for live firing ranges.