Category: Teesside
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Eston Nab — From Bronze Age Fort to Burnt-Out Cars
“The remains of old bottles were scattered all along our route, and other rubbish was offensively obvious everywhere. There were broken fences and damaged trees. Saddest sight of all was the old watch tower which is rapidly losing all recognisable shape under the rough hands of time, the weather and mischievous sightseers.” Not my words,…
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Coal Dust and Grief: The Senghenydd Colliery Disaster of 1913
An afternoon’s saunter on South Gare, where the Tees River meets the sea. A remarkably high tide, a strong westerly breeze, and a rainbow glistening on the roaring waves. Or should I perhaps refer to that as a ‘spray bow’? Cobwebs duly blown away, I thought about how I could relate Britain’s worst pit disaster,…
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Tees Bay Pilots—A legacy of expertise and evolution
An early evening trip to the South Gare rewarded us with windswept skies and sunlit wind turbines. However, it was the western skies across the Tees bay that truly stole the show, presenting a more dramatic spectacle. A huge container ship had just passed by the Gare, en route to some distant port. Guiding this…
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Wilton village
Perhaps the most least known village of Teesside. Its tweeness belies its proximity to the petrochemical industries of the Wilton International Site, or whatever it calls itself nowadays. Wilton offers plenty of photogenic opportunities. The ‘Castle’, rebuilt 1807 and now a golf club; the old school, built 1855, and the church, rebuilt 1907/8. I think…
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Paddy’s Hole
A small man-made harbour on the river side of the South Gare Breakwater. Brightly painted boats bob in the breeze and ‘quaint’ boat-houses, once the home of salmon fishermen, align the shore. It is assumed the name, Paddy’s Hole, comes from the large number of Irish navvies that helped build the breakwater between 1863 and…
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Redcar Sands
The £1.6m “vertical pier” dominating the sea front.