Tag: ironstone
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Belmont Ironstone Mine
Early morning. A good day beckons but Guisborough has not yet escaped the shadow of Highcliff Nab. Morning mist creeps up from the Cleveland valley. The range of buildings on the left was stables built for the Bolckow, Vaughan and Company’s Belmont Ironstone Mine when they drove a new drift to old workings which operated…
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Ingleby Manor Ironstone Mine
Armed with a six-digit grid reference I have twice tried to locate the remains of the Ingleby Manor Ironstone Mine, and twice failed. The grid reference I obtained from the Catalogue of Cleveland Ironstone Mines by Peter Tuffs, the guru of local industrial archaeology. It was with trepidation then to discover it was to be…
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The New Drift, Eston Ironstone Mine
Woke up to rain again and with more rain forecast, it was a hard choice where to go on my morning stroll. Then my notes reminded me that John Marley died this day in 1891. That settled it, I headed for the Eston Hills. John Marley was born at Middridge Grange near Shildon in 1823.…
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Rosedale East
The fledgling has returned. ‘Reading week’ he says. Half term by any other name. A suggestion: “do you fancy going to the Lion Inn tomorrow? I’ll go on my bike and meet you there”. So I find myself in Rosedale for the second time in four days. But a different Rosedale with the Inn in…
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Skelton Park Pit
Very little remains of Cleveland ironstone mines. It was second only to coal as the UK’s biggest extractive industry. Ironstone had been mined in the Cleveland Hills since the 12th Century when primitive furnaces called bloomeries were used to melt the iron out of stone gained from rock outcrops along the dale sides. But it…
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Kilton Ironstone Mine
It’s been fifteen months since I was last visited the Kilton Ironstone Mine and the reinforced concrete winder house seems to have deteriorated noticeably. Large pieces of concrete have fallen off exposing the mesh reinforcement. The building was built in the late 1930s to house the 370 brake horse power electric winder motor. At that time the mine…
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An heffalump trap?
I visited this brick lined shaft on Tuesday but I wasn’t happy with the photos so a return visit today. It was a ventilation shaft for the Coate Moor Ironstone Mine. A furnace would have been at the bottom and the air warmed would rise drawing in fresh air from the main drift entrance. Coate…
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Spawood Mine Powder House
Even in the bright summer sunshine it’s dark beneath the tree canopy of Spawood near Slapewath. The powder house stored black powder, the explosive used in the ironstone mines. To minimise potential damage in the advent of an explosion, the building was substantially made with thick walls buried within the hillside some distance from the mine buildings. Spawood Mine was leased by the Weardale, Coal…
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Calcining Kilns, Rosedale East Mines
A bit of a dilemma. Parked at the Lion Inn and went for a circuit of Rosedale with visibility less than the width of the road and the temperature below 10ºc. And so it remained until tea time when the mist finally cleared and the sun came out. But by that time I was comfortably back home. Rosedale was…
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Belmont Ironstone Mine
Why is it that runners always think of biking as an easy option? An active rest day. My own bike ride today enabled me to get into Guisborough Woods which looked green and lush with vicious nettles on the floor and the sycamores not yet dense enough to keep out the light. I was surprised to…