A portal to another dimension

Behind us on the moors is a rather enigmatic stone arch - well, its a door way and the only remaining piece of a large farm house built in 1672 by a wealthy Yeoman farmer. We've visited it before, years ago when the boys were quite small and Youngest can only remember how foul the weather was....

For years, we've driven past it - it always seemed brooding and distant on the skyline as we drove along the winding road to Hebden Bridge and I had no inclination to revisit such a gloomy landmark.

Then a few weeks ago, I looked at it as we drove past. A small but dominant feature on an open moorland field and I suddenly had the urge to see it with new eyes. So, on Tuesday, Youngest took me for our first dogless walk to revisit a moment in our history that neither of us really recall clearly or kindly.

Standing at 11ish feet tall and with a now very weathered stone carved sign over the lintel - the door way stands proud in the landscape and I realised how little I know about it.

Typical for around where we live, a lot of narrow valleys were earmarked for reservoirs and just below the doorway are two such examples and apparently in 1886, the building was demolished for their construction. However they are too far away to have interfered with the building so I wondered if it had been relocated up above on the moors.

The weather that day was far kinder than our collective memories and in the spring sunshine, it felt rather refreshing to be out on the moors breathing in clear air and appreciating the far distant views.

We'll go back, but we'll walk further, towards the trees on the horizon then to their right where a more modern monument to the memory of a loved one is situated - a solid granite bench with an sublime view. 

Youngest has a vintage Kodak Polaroid camera with all the quirks and glitches befitting something of that age and he took an image of the door way - doesn't it look like a portal to another dimension? 

Yes, we thought so too.  Our memories of this archway are better ones now than the ones we'd harboured from before.