Ayton Banks Ironstone Mine — its legacy

Playing with my new tripod, a Christmas goodie. I do like the motion blur effect of long exposures.

The water is draining from the Ayton Banks ironstone mine, the stone of which turned out to be poor-quality, leading to the mine’s brief existence. It had opened in the first decade of the 20th-century but closed during the depression that followed the First World War. The rusty colouring is the result of ochre – an earthy pigment of ferric oxide. And it’s still oozing out of the old underground workings, more than a century since the last miner clocked off.

Downstream, about fifty metres away, the stream appears clean, with no more of that red tint. But for sure, the dissolved ochre will still be there, polluting the stream, suffocating organisms, and probably clogging fish gills before discharging into the Tees.