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Why is Caley called Caley? (Read 5287 times)

spidermonkey09

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Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 10:54:40 am
As above; the town is called Otley, the woodland is called the Chevin...anyone know the etymology of Caley?

teestub

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#1 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 11:13:19 am
http://www.lostheritage.org.uk/houses/lh_yorkshire_caleyhall_info_gallery.html this used to be just across the road (Caley Hall farm is still there). It's not uncommon for individual crags to have names unrelated to the hillside on which they are located.

spidermonkey09

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#2 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 11:41:26 am
Nice gaff! Yes of course, I suppose I can make a rationale for a lot of other similar crags based on local village names eg. Froggatt, Bamford, Rylstone, and the name of the hillside is well known as the Chevin but non-climbers have no idea what Caley is when I mention it. Hence the curiosity  :)

SA Chris

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#3 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 11:49:18 am
If you mean proper entomology "cayle" in Gaelic is "fall" which means the Gaels who visited first may have made a painful first discovery. Or struggled to get up Pebble Wall.

spidermonkey09

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#4 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 11:59:09 am
Slow day at work today! Looks like the Chevin used to be known as Caley Park:

"The Fawkes owned the Danefield allotment and adjoining Caley Park, across the valley from Farnley, which at that time were almost certainly bare, unforested moorland.  Walter Fawkes planted this with woodland during the late 1780s and this area is now more commonly known as the Otley Chevin; it was gifted by Fawkes' descendents in 1946 to Otley Urban District Council "for perpetual use by the public for exercise and recreation" and it is enjoyed by many visitors today."

http://turner.yorkshire.com/trails/caley-park-otley-chevin

Will Hunt

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#5 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 12:33:19 pm
When naming a crag, I think the go-to is the Ordnance Survey map, which calls the rocks Caley Crags.
https://binged.it/2OChNLK

This answers the question "why do climbers call it Caley", but doesn't answer the infinitely more fascinating question of why the crags have been called that.

As Stubbs points out, there was a house there named Caley Hall, but the name of the rocks almost certainly predates the house. I can't find any info on when the house was built, but it must have been there in the early 1800s because Turner painted it (note Pedestal Wall clearly visible in the background):
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-caley-hall-yorkshire-with-stag-hunters-returning-home-tw0166

Perhaps an architecture fan can tell us what period that house dates from?

The oldest map I can find is only as far back as the 1840s which doesn't help:
https://maps.nls.uk/view/102344863

Converse to what Chris suggests, I suspect that this is standard prefix and suffix stuff.

The suffix "ley" in Yorkshire derives from the Anglo-Saxon "leah" which means a clearing in a wood. This paints the picture of what the Airedale and Wharfedale would have looked like in antiquity - heavily wooded with small settlements in clearings. Bingley, Keighley, Otley, Ilkley, Shipley - all leading upstream to Sheep Town (Skipton).

Lots of these places are named for the person or family who lived/owned the particular settlement. So looking at Giggleswick, we know that the -wick bit indicates a settlement or farm (as with Keswick, Appletreewick, Barnoldswick etc). The Giggle bit is more obscure to us but if you turn to page 47 of your copy of the Domesday Book you'll find "Ghigeleswic". I gather that Gikel or Gichel is a Saxon name which has become bastardised over the centuries. Giggleswick is Gikel's farm. Similarly, Otley is apparently the clearing of Otta (http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Yorkshire%20WR/Otley).

So coming back to Caley - it's a woodland clearing and maybe the people who lived there had a name that sounds a bit like "Cay"? I had a look through some lists of Saxon names and didn't find anything that fits.

Starter for ten:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place_names_in_Ireland_and_the_United_Kingdom

cheque

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#6 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 12:48:00 pm
When naming a crag, I think the go-to is the Ordnance Survey map

Black Rocks is called "Black Rock"  :no: on the OS map.

Will Hunt

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#7 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:06:20 pm
This shit just got real. If you look at the old map that I linked to, you can clearly see that the old Hall was about adjacent to where the Chevin Gate is now (the main parking that you'd use to access the crag section). Lots of the tracks haven't changed position and are still there so you can fairly accurately say that Turner's painting was done from this point of view: https://binged.it/2OJ7LZy
In Turner's painting he is looking roughly to the east, with the crags and hillside on his right. So the bit of crag you can see can't be anything at Crag area like Pedestal Wall.
I can't really piece together the blocks that he's looking at. The biggest thing must be the Great Flake boulder, but that should be barely offset from the hall - to the south and barely to the east.

So has Turner artificially moved the crags to a more prominent part of his painting to make them sit more dramatically above the Hall?

teestub

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#8 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:13:53 pm


The suffix "ley" in Yorkshire derives from the Anglo-Saxon "leah" which means a clearing in a wood. This paints the picture of what the Airedale and Wharfedale would have looked like in antiquity - heavily wooded with small settlements in clearings. Bingley, Keighley, Otley, Ilkley, Shipley - all leading upstream to Sheep Town (Skipton).


Props for the Turner, that's a great find!

In Wharfedale the centre of attention from its formation was very much the Abbey. As I understand most of the surrounding countryside, towns and villages were producing food, cloth, shoes etc. in support of the Monks and the pilgrims. I'm not sure whether its influence would have stretched as far away as Otley, which I guess is realtively equidistant between Kirkstall and Bolton.

spidermonkey09

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#9 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:13:58 pm
The only mitigating factor that might be a plausible explanation for that, instead of artistic license, is that according to the article I quoted below it was pretty much moorland in the past before it was forested. Might you have been able to see the crag, looking distinctly regal, from that point then perhaps? You definitely can't now with all the trees!

Will Hunt

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#10 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:26:23 pm


The suffix "ley" in Yorkshire derives from the Anglo-Saxon "leah" which means a clearing in a wood. This paints the picture of what the Airedale and Wharfedale would have looked like in antiquity - heavily wooded with small settlements in clearings. Bingley, Keighley, Otley, Ilkley, Shipley - all leading upstream to Sheep Town (Skipton).


Props for the Turner, that's a great find!

In Wharfedale the centre of attention from its formation was very much the Abbey. As I understand most of the surrounding countryside, towns and villages were producing food, cloth, shoes etc. in support of the Monks and the pilgrims. I'm not sure whether its influence would have stretched as far away as Otley, which I guess is realtively equidistant between Kirkstall and Bolton.

Fun Kirkstall Abbey fact! During the dissolution, Kirkstall Road was rerouted through the Abbey itself as a mark of disrespect. The carts - pulled by pissing, shitting beasts of the field - going into Leeds would have deviated off their usual course, gone through the main door of the church, down the nave, up a ramp, and exited through the main eastern window in the chancel. What a diss!

tomtom

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#11 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:49:13 pm
Art innit. An interpretation of a scene or whatever is being depicted - rather than a photographic like reproduction.

I wonder how Picasso would have depicted the sights and feelings of bouldering at Kudos wall ;) Mondrian might have liked the volume arrangements at a modern wall...

Will Hunt

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#12 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:52:12 pm
Just to be sure, I'm not having a go at Turner, it's just interesting. I'm not even sure that the crags have been shifted.

cheque

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#13 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 01:58:24 pm
Art innit. An interpretation of a scene or whatever is being depicted - rather than a photographic like reproduction.

Like the old paintings of the White Peak that make High Tor look like El Capitan.

Will Hunt

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#14 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 02:00:27 pm
To be fair, when you stand in Matlock Bath, High Tor does look like El Cap.

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#15 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 02:22:15 pm
Great stuff Will. Turner had previous of course

Avon Gorge and Hotwells (Giant's Cave Buttress and Suspension Bridge Buttress before the suspension bridge)



Avon Gorge (looking south at the Main Wall area before was quarried?)

cheque

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#16 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 02:45:50 pm
To be fair, when you stand in Matlock Bath, High Tor does look like El Cap.

As a kid we drove through Matlock Bath and I clearly remember seeing climbers on what I now know is Debauchery- one at the belay and another finishing off the first pitch on second. High Tor looked like the biggest cliff in the world and they looked like astronauts to me- I had my face pressed up against the window watching them. That's probably how I ended up being a climber.

SA Chris

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moose

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#18 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 03:24:52 pm
Off topic, but this is a favourite crag painting, the Bowderstone by Atkinson Grimshaw, who also did some great paintings of city centres at night, like a Leeds version of Whistler - his paintings are similar to Whistler's (and maybe Turner's) Nocturnes.


Will Hunt

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#19 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 03:33:02 pm
When you look at images like that, even looking at old photos from the 70s of places like Brimham, it sure makes you realise why we have such a struggle keeping climbs clean nowadays. I've seen photos of the back of Joker's Wall that make it look like a desert! Imagine a de-tree'd Guisecliff!

teestub

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#20 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 03:54:05 pm
Good attention to detail on the Chowderstone, you can see the Picnic ramp line!

I didn't get to go to this exhibition, but some great 'stone landscape info in here and another great impression https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/borrowdale-and-derwent-water/features/the-time-machine---a-temporary-installation-at-the-bowder-stone

I guess it's important to consider that the area around the stone would have only been cleared at the time of Moose's picture as it was part of a managed woodland. Personally I much prefer its current sylvan surrounds.


moose

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#21 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 04:22:24 pm
Another oil-on-canvas topo.  Perhaps not a style I particularly like but it does portray some of Gordale's Mordor-like feel and you can discern Face Route and possibly the crack and bulge of a Cave Route.


spidermonkey09

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#22 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 04:35:58 pm
I reckon thats got the blocky, snappy nature of the rock down to a tee, and the bull in the bottom right looks like hes just fallen off pretty high on his project...

Will Hunt

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#23 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 04:41:59 pm
That's amazing, Moose. Who is the artist? I love the blocky, "digital camouflage" texture to the rock. It looks like a vision of hell, Gordale's resemblance to which is beyond question after it was used as a set for death in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.


moose

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#24 Re: Why is Caley called Caley?
September 20, 2018, 04:53:48 pm
That's amazing, Moose. Who is the artist?

James Ward, he mainly painted animals or scenes involving animals (hunts etc). Aside from the painting of Gordale, his best known work to me is one of Marengo, Napoleon's horse, looking incredibly bug-eyed and terrified.

 

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