Roseberry Topping

The Roseberry area has been inhabited for thousands of years and the hill has long attracted attention for its distinctive shape. A Bronze Age hoard was discovered on the slopes of the hill and is now in the Sheffield City Museum. It was occupied during the Iron Age: walled enclosures and the remains of huts dating from the period are still visible in the vicinity of the hill. During this period Jet may have been mined in the area. The hill may have been held in special regard by the Vikings who settled in Cleveland during the early medieval period and gave the area many of its place names. They gave Roseberry Topping its present name: first attested in 1119 as Othenesberg, its second…

In Joseph Reed's 1761 farce The Register-Office, the character Margery Moorpout, who hails from 'Yatton', sings the praises of 'Roseberry', which she claims to be a mile and a half high: <blockquote> Certainly God! ye knaw Roseberry? I thought ony Fule had knawn Roseberry!—It's t' biggest Hill in oll Yorkshire—It's aboun a Mile an a hofe high, an as coad as Ice at' top on't i't hettest Summer's Day—that it's. </blockquote> In 1783, Thomas Pierson, a blacksmith, watchmaker and schoolmaster from the nearby town of Stokesley, wrote an eponymous poem about the hill. Pierson's work was much admired locally and it was republished in 1847.