Not quite ‘water, water, everywhere’

The concluding winter lecture in the series, for Forest of Galtres Society Members, was one which, had we been thinking about it, we have been experiencing all too often over recent months; ‘Yorkshire’s Water Resources’.

It was even more apposite that where our lecturer has his home is in an East Yorkshire village which has recently suffered considerable problems with water coming up from the ground and from anywhere, and spilling out in and past properties, along the roads and just about anywhere.

It was quite astonishing to see just how much water was busy trickling about in the village. One clue is that the east end of the very long village has a pond. It has a short street named Spring Terrace.

Your scribe immediately thought about Easingwold, and the fact that we have a street named Spring Street. No pond, but there used to be one, in a different place not far away.

There is a bubbling issue alongside Spring Street, and across the road behind the Almshouses, another water trough fed by a source which continues flowing.

Is there a reason for this similarity?

Back to the lecture! Our lecturer, Paul Speight, had so much of interest to tell us, at the end of March.

Paul is a Hydrogeologist and he works for Yorkshire Water. Paul had prepared specifically for his Easingwold audience an explanation of the local geology.

His map shows that Easingwold lies on Mercia Mudstone. To the east is Middle Jurassic.

To the west, it is Early Triassic. The geological layers of these rocks all slope down towards the east.

Interestingly, Crayke sits atop an area which has two faults, one at each side and the area between has dropped downwards. This sounds alarming, but this is geological time, not now.