Tuesday, 27 January 2015

Marston Moor Monument

Battle of Marston Moor Monument

Tuesday 27th January 2015

A trip out to Fountains Abbey was planned, but a late start and running from sunny weather at Driffield to very overcast weather around York resulted in plan 'B' - there wasn't one! We headed around York bypass and onto the Wetherby road when I saw the signpost for Marston Moor. Having just read a fascinating book by Jack Binns - 'A place of Great Importance', Scarborough in the Civil Wars (I never realised that 'us Scarborough folk' were such 'turncoats'), I had to take the right turn.
Looking onto the monument and the battlefield in front of me, I was taken back to the scene on the 2nd July 1644 when Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarians defeated the Royalists. Four thousand Royalists and several hundred Parliamentarians lost their lives, the majority buried in mass graves in the fields beyond the monument. Taking a photograph now seemed an invasion of their privacy. I took it, but with feeling. The leaden sky and the peaceful outlook called for a black and white image.

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