Rosedale Wyke to Ruin: The Decline of Port Mulgrave

Every time I visit Port Mulgrave, I am struck by how little it changes—save, of course, for the gradual but ceaseless gnawing of the harbour by the North Sea. Today, I didn’t manage to descend to the beach, not that I missed much, for from Rosedale Cliffs I could see quite plainly that the old harbour has resigned itself to silt and steady erosion.

The little fishing port once had the more pastoral name of Rosedale Wyke, back in the days when industrious men saw fit to disturb the Dogger seam of ironstone. They dug their tunnels with all the enthusiasm of men certain of an ironclad future, even sinking shafts in 1857 from the very quayside to the Main seam below sea level. Meanwhile, just north of them, at Brackenberry Wyke, their co-workers hacked away at the higher Pectern seam, hauling their ore south along the shoreline to Rosedale Wyke, where ships, of course, had to be loaded in a frantic rush to avoid the tide—lest one lose both cargo and reputation. Coal ships returning from London, empty, were often roped in to carry the ore.

In 1860, the quaint wooden jetty was cast aside in favour of stone, and Port Mulgrave was born—a rebranding exercise worthy of the grandest Victorian optimism. But as with so many great enterprises, nature and economics conspired to put an end to all these workings by 1881.

However, seeing the writing on the wall, in 1875 the company had opened the Grinkle Ironstone Mine, and, for their next feat, engineered a mile-long tunnel to connect that mine with the one at Port Mulgrave. All was then well until 1917, when the spectre of German U-boats (or so one is told) provoked a move to hoist the ore up to the North Eastern Railway. After all, the Kaiser’s submarines were undoubtedly poised to strike at ships carrying Yorkshire’s ironstone, if not the empire itself.

By 1934, someone managed to set fire to the wooden gantry during dismantling of some machinery. The final insult, however, came in the Second World War, when the Royal Engineers, showing their characteristic zeal, attempted to demolish the breakwater, for fear of a German invasion, succeeding only in leaving it half-broken.