The Parched Pond of Margrove

Two swans drift across the shrunken waters of Margrove Pond, looking strangely out of place in a wetland that has seen so much reshaping and had so much optimism. This 18-acre site, given to the Cleveland Wildlife Trust in 1993, lies on land once called “The Carrs,” a name that simply meant swampy ground¹Trust takes over ponds. East Cleveland Herald & Post, 11 August 1993. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003924/19930811/026/0026.

The swans glide where I guess the clay was once gouged from the ground for the nearby Carrs Tilery brickworks, active between 1867 and 1879. Bricks from this short-lived enterprise built the Skelton Estate’s houses and propped up the ironstone mines. What is now still water was once raw material²Slapewath-Boosbeck-Circular-walk. County of Cleveland.³Tees Wildlife Trust. CIAS Walk Margrove Valley 9 July 2008..

Around the pond lies the Margrove Valley, carved by ice and later transformed by railways and ironstone. After the Durham and Cleveland Railway arrived in 1861, four communities sprang up, shadows of the seven mines that sustained them. The swans swim in a landscape born of industry, yet now reclaimed by silence.

Even the name “Margrove Park” carries layers of history. Local lore gives it to Victorian taste, but records say otherwise. “Magerbrigge” is noted between 1230 and 1250 in the Guisborough Cartulary, and “Maugre Park” appears in 1407. Walter de Fauconberg of Skelton Castle created a deer park here, 355 acres by a 1585 survey. Rabbits may also have been enclosed, as the southern slopes are still called Skelton Warren. The swans today drift over what was once both working land and hunting ground, oblivious to centuries of change beneath their calm reflection⁴Durham Archaeological Journal 10, 1994, 93- 103. IRONSTONE MINERS’ HOUSES IN THE MARGROVE VALLEY, CLEVELAND by Stephen J Sherlock.

• 1
  Trust takes over ponds. East Cleveland Herald & Post, 11 August 1993. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003924/19930811/026/0026
• 2
  Slapewath-Boosbeck-Circular-walk. County of Cleveland.
• 3
  Tees Wildlife Trust. CIAS Walk Margrove Valley 9 July 2008.
• 4
  Durham Archaeological Journal 10, 1994, 93- 103. IRONSTONE MINERS’ HOUSES IN THE MARGROVE VALLEY, CLEVELAND by Stephen J Sherlock