Kirby Bank: A Slice Through Time

You’re looking at a slice of history.

The summit steps of Kirby Bank consist of hard sandstone, descending to softer shale below, both formations dating back to the Jurassic period. During the last Ice Age, the Tees glacier reached the top of the Bank, creating a ‘randkluft‘ as ice melted against the warmer rock. As the climate warmed, meltwater surged down this crevasse in torrents, carving a path southward. A landslip in the Late Glacial period concealed this dramatic feature.

Between 1706 and 1720, the shale was quarried, burned for months, and then steeped in water. This water was channelled through wooden troughs to an alum house, where it was processed into alum crystals, a fixative for cloth dyeing. A subsequent landslip erased most traces of this industrious past.

Later, between 1750 and 1850, sandstone was extracted from the top strata of the Bank to meet the demand of a local building boom. The stone was transported via sledways down to a loading bay halfway up the Trod.

In the latter half of the 19th century, jet, fossilised wood, was mined for jewellery. Miners drove drifts into the hillside at the level of the col, enduring perilous and dark conditions.