Hutton Village

From ironstone terraces to Highcliffe Nab

Three short terraces of ironstone cottages stand beside a small green where the land begins to climb into Guisborough Forest. Henry Thomas built about thirty of them in 1855 for miners working the Codhill ironstone, which had been coming out of the ground here since 1853 and went by rail to the blast furnaces on Teesside. The rows are still the heart of the place. Behind them the ground rises quickly, and within a few hundred yards you are among trees and heading for the moor.

This is walking country before it is anything else. Paths and fire roads run straight out of the village into the forest and on towards the tops. The long option is the circuit to Highcliffe Nab, seven and a half miles from Hutton Village Road, climbing steeply through Hutton Wood for the first mile, crossing Hutton Moor, then picking up the Cleveland Way out to the Nab before dropping back through Guisborough Woods and farmland. There are no stiles and a good deal of mud.

Short walks, food and forest facilities

For something shorter, the Bousdale Beck Trail is a waymarked forest loop of under three miles from the Guisborough Forest visitor centre, about ninety minutes, beginning with a stiff pull up through beech wood. Part of the old railway trackbed that once served Hutton Gate station is now a footpath, which makes the flattest walking here the line the trains used to take.

The village core keeps no pub or shop of its own. The nearest is The Voyager, a Marston's family pub over at Hutton Meadows on the Guisborough side, which does hand-battered fish and chips, wholetail Whitby scampi, chicken tikka masala, four-cheese macaroni and a Southern-fried chicken burger, with Bramley apple crumble after. There is a beer garden, an outdoor play area, and dogs are allowed in the bar. The forest visitor centre has a café for hot and cold food, cakes and ice cream, and beside it an adventure playground, ponds and a picnic area, with views out to Roseberry Topping, Teesside and the coast.

Hutton Hall and the Pease estate

The other presence here is Hutton Hall. Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease commissioned it from Alfred Waterhouse in 1866 and 1867 and turned some hundred and thirteen hectares around it into parkland. Waterhouse went on to design the Natural History Museum in London; this was one of his rare country houses. The gardens once ran to more than twenty gardeners, with a fern house, a mushroom house and exotic fruit under glass, and The Gardening World in 1902 called the fernery "very prettily constructed and has a very natural appearance." At Home Farm two water turbines and a hydraulic hoist from 1880 still survive, driven by a dam built for the purpose. The North York Moors authority calls Pease the "father of Middlesbrough." The hall was sold in 1948 and partly divided into flats.

Arriving at Hutton Village

Getting here is quietest by road. The nearest station is Great Ayton, a little under three miles off and unstaffed, with step-free access, and the Arriva 65 runs Monday to Saturday along Hutton Lane and The Avenue, about a kilometre from the cottage rows.

Reading the estate landscape

Look at the estate buildings and the old order is still legible. The Garden House was given an angled window so the staff could be watched at work, and a path was laid so that Lady Pease could make her weekly inspection of the gardens and greenhouses.