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Guisborough, Cleveland and the River Leven
Cleveland in Yorkshire

Here we cover places and history in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire from Guisborough westward towards Roseberry Topping and the valley of the River Leven, including Great Ayton and Stokesley as well as heading south to the fringes of the North York Moors and north to the outskirts of Middlesbrough.

Roseberry Topping
Roseberry Topping © David Simpson
Cleveland’s coastal area, including Saltburn, Redcar, Staithes and the former ironstone mining villages to the east of Guisborough is covered in our Cleveland coast page. Cleveland is an ancient district of Yorkshire, its ‘cliff-land’ name referring to both the cliffs of the coast and the steep hills that meet the Vale of the Tees and Vale of Mowbray.

‘Cleveland’ is often mistakenly thought to be a modern invention. This confusion is due to the short-lived ‘County of Cleveland’ that existed for only 22 years (1974-1996) and included the former County Durham towns of Stockton; Hartlepool and Billingham to the north of the Tees.

The real, historic Cleveland is on the Yorkshire side of the Tees and encompasses the valleys of the River Esk and River Leven and along the coast it stretches from the Tees to the outskirts of Whitby. The earliest record of its name is in the twelfth century Orkneyinga Saga, recalling King Harald Hardrada of Norway’s landing in ‘Cliffland’.

Guisborough : Capital of Cleveland
Guisborough is perhaps a Viking name: ‘the borough or fortified place belonging to a Viking called Gigr’, but this is not certain. Evidence from place-names in the surrounding Cleveland area show that Viking settlement was very extensive, perhaps to the extent that no other area of England compares.
Guisborough is a handsome market town in rural surroundings on the northern edge of the North York Moors to the south east of Middlesbrough. It was the ancient capital of Cleveland and certainly one of the most historic towns in the area. Like so many towns in North Yorkshire and South Durham, the town is centred upon a busy market street.

At Guisborough the main street is called Westgate in which we find a curious eighteenth century market cross decorated with a sundial and weather vane. The old town hall which stands on the site of a toll booth in Westgate dates from 1821.

Guisborough’s beautiful ruined priory which is the most notable feature of the town can cause confusion because the priory name is spelled ‘Gisborough’ without the ‘u’ that appears in the name of the town. It is situated at the east end of Westgate where it turns into Church Street. The grounds of the priory include a gatehouse of about 1200 and a dovecot of the 1600s which belonged to the influential local family called the Chaloners.

Gisborough Priory was an Augustinian establishment and founded around 1120. The brethren of the priory were called canons, in the Augustinian tradition, rather than monks.

The priory’s founder was Robert De Brus, a member of the family later known as the Bruces who were important landowners on both sides of the River Tees (see also Hart and Hartlepool, Skelton and Yarm). Robert De Brus of Skelton was an ancestor of the famous Scottish king, Robert the Bruce (1290-1329).

The original late Saxon or Viking age settlement of Guisborough lay within what would become the lands of the priory. It was superseded by the growth of the new and substantial town of Guisborough that prospered after a weekly market was granted by King Henry III in 1263.

Close to the priory is the church of St Nicholas, built in the Perpendicular architectural style and dating from around 1500.

Gisborough Hall about half a mile to the west of the priory uses the old spelling. Now a hotel, it stands on the site of an older farm house but was re-built as a hall in Jacobean style by William Milford Teulon for Admiral Thomas Chaloner in 1856

Charltons Bank and Freeborough Hill
To the east of Guisborough the A171 rises into the North York Moors via Slapewath and the steeply climbing Charltons Bank.

Slapewath’s Norse name means ‘slippery ford’ but the nearby village called Charltons that gives its name to the steep rise here is named from Thomas Charlton who built ‘Charltons’ village for the miners of the Slapewath ironstone mine in the 1870s. Several villages between here and Saltburn on the coast were former ironstone mining settlements.

The A171 continues to rise steeply above Charltons village up to the Birk Brow Car Park at Low Moor where there are good views northward to the Durham coast and the high rise buildings of distant Sunderland.

The road continues across the moors and after about a mile passes the Lockwood Beck Reservoir and then after a further mile we encounter the intriguing mound of Freebrough Hill near the Jolly Sailors Pub in the Moorsholm area.

It looks like a prehistoric man-made feature so unsurprisingly, in local legend, is said to be the burial place of King Arthur. Rising 821 feet it is formed by an Oolitic cap left left behind following glacial erosion. Like Roseberry Topping, its name has Viking origins, from the Norse goddess of fertility, Freya. The ‘brough’ part of the name signifies a hill or a fortified place.

Roseberry Topping : Viking summit
To the west of Guisborough, the A171 heads towards the southern outskirts of Middlesbrough while the nearby A173 heads south west through Pinchintorpe, a name that was originally just ‘Thorpe’ (Torp), a Viking word for an outlying village to which the name Pinchun, a family who held land hereabouts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was added.

Onwards from Pinchinthorpe the A173 heads into the village of Newton under Roseberry in the shadow of Cleveland’s most iconic hill : Roseberry Topping.

Roseberry Topping is undoubtedly the best known natural landmark in Cleveland and is steeped in local folklore. It can be clearly seen from many parts of rural Cleveland, industrial Teesside and southern parts of County Durham. From its distinctive outline it has sometimes been called ‘The Cleveland Matterhorn’.

Roseberry Topping was once used by sailors out at sea as an indicator of changing weather, as an old rhyme records:

“When Roseberry Topping wears a cap,
Let Cleveland then beware of a clap!”

Roseberry Topping was connected with the Vikings, as the word ‘Topping’, from ‘Toppen’, is one of a number of old words for a hill, but the original Viking name for Roseberry Topping was Odins-Beorge meaning Odin’s Hill. Roseberry may have been a centre for the worship of the Viking god, Odin, in pagan times.

Over the years, the name changed to Othensberg, Ohenseberg, Ounsberry and Ouesberry. Association with the village then called Newton-under-Ouseberry at the foot of the hill led to the modern name Roseberry when the final ‘R’ of ‘under’ produced the initial letter of the modern name. Newton under Ouseberry is now called Newton under Roseberry.

Newton under Roseberry
Pagan and Christian: Roseberry Topping (left) and St Oswald’s church, Newton under Roseberry © David Simpson
The church at Newton under Roseberry is dedicated to St Oswald, possibly the Northumbrian king and saint who converted his kingdom, (which included Cleveland), to Christianity. St Oswald’s is a largely Norman church, though very likely on the site of an earlier one. Incorporated into the south east corner of the tower is a stone carving of a dragon attacking a four-legged animal which has variously been identified as a cow, a horse or even a panther. The carving is of Anglo-Saxon or Viking age origin.

Situated on the Cleveland Way, Roseberry Topping is a popular climb with excellent views of Teesside and the Vale of the Tees and out to the sea. It was no doubt climbed on more than one occasion by Captain James Cook, whose boyhood home was a cottage at Airy Holme Farm near the foot of the hill. The farm is on the southern slopes of the hill and it was here that Cook’s father, a Scotsman from Roxburghshire, also called James Cook, worked for Thomas Skottowe, the Lord of the Manor for Great Ayton. Cook senior was married to a local woman called Grace Pace of Thornaby.
Normally ‘holm(e)’ in a place-name refers to an island or meander of some kind but the name of Airy Holme derives from airgh-um – the plural of ‘airgh’ – a name used for a shieling (or shelter) by Irish or Gaelic Vikings, who were sometimes also called Norse Gaels or Hiberno-Norse. The Gaelic speaking Scottish islands and certain coastal parts of Ireland were important Viking colonies where Viking settlers adopted some of the words and ways of the Gaelic natives and formed an important element in the Viking colonisation of parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Lake District.