Rosedale Abbey is a small village, with a population of less than 300 people, situated in the heart of Rosedale, on the North York Moors.
The name of Rosedale is thought to be Viking in origin, being a derivation of "Rossi", which could be a personal name or the word for horse. Another possible root is the word "rhos", which meant moor.
The Abbey part is actually a bit of a misnomer too, as the 'abbey' ruins that the name refers to are actually the remains of a Cistercian Priory, the difference being that nuns lived in a priory and monks lived in an abbey.
So, Rosedale Abbey isn't anything to do with roses, and didn't have an abbey!
It became a boom town in Victorian times. Locally sourced iron ore has been processed on the North York Moors since medieval times but the discovery of high-grade magnetic ironstone in Rosedale during the 1850s saw the village’s population explode, growing to three thousand in just two decades.
The railway soon followed carrying iron ore from Rosedale down onto the Cleveland plains, and for seventy years Rosedale was a noisy, dusty and active part of industrial Britain. The mines shut in the 1920s but many impressive industrial ruins still line the valley today and the spectacularly scenic route of the railway can now be followed on foot all of the way round Rosedale, across the top of Farndale and up to the plains on the dramatic Greenhow incline.
Today, the village has reverted to being a small pretty place, with tourism it's main industry, with a number of caravan parks in the area.
This shot shows the village green, with the Abbey Tea Rooms and Abbey Stores along one side, with the bus stop where the Moorsbus drops us off and picks us up just off the right of the shot.
It was quite a dull day for our trip today, but this weekend is the last weekend of Moorsbus operations for 2021, so we felt we had to go, and we had a short but very pretty walk.
Thank you all for your lovely comments and favs, they are very much appreciated.
Although the Moorsbus services for 2021 are finished, there are still some local buses to towns on the fringes of the Moors, so we will still be having some trips out, just not to some of the more remote palces that we prefer.
It is hard to imagine a pretty place like Rosedale Abbey as the centre of the iron industry, but it was. I bought a book about the history, with some impressive photos, so I'm looking forward to reading that.
Thank you all for your lovely comments and favs, they are very much appreciated.
Although the Moorsbus services for 2021 are finished, there are still some local buses to towns on the fringes of the Moors, so we will still be having some trips out, just not to some of the more remote palces that we prefer.
It is hard to imagine a pretty place like Rosedale Abbey as the centre of the iron industry, but it was. I bought a book about the history, with some impressive photos, so I'm looking forward to reading that.
Ian
Thank you Monica. It is a lovely village now, but it must have been very different in the mining era.
Ian