Category: Carlton Bank
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Pirates, Sugar and Stone: The Carlton Bank Alum Works
Some industrial stories begin with a balance sheet. This one begins with a privateer’s cannon. The alum works at Carlton Bank, gorged out of the Cleveland Hills, has a history that stretches from the Caribbean to the Cleveland coast. It is, when you look closely, a rather splendid tale of sea dogs, sugar barons, and…
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Not Guilty: The Carlton Bank Case, 1972
Carlton Bank. Even on a dreich day there was a surprising number of folk around. Yet, in May 1972, it was the scene of one of the more extraordinary legal cases the North Riding has ever seen. A potato merchant named Kenneth Saddington drove five miles up to these moors one Saturday night with a…
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From Stone Ruck to the Lure of Fascism
A tumulus mapped as Stone Ruck with a view up to Brown Hill, the high point of Carlton Bank. A single boulder, pressed into service as a boundary marker, denotes the Feversham estate from that of the Marquess of Ailesbury. Curiously, the boundary is not drawn at the top of the tumulus but shy of…
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The Alum Industry of Carlton Bank
It is difficult to imagine that 250 years ago this tranquil scene was a hub of intense industrial activity. For over a century, Jurassic shales were quarried here to produce alum crystals, which were essential as a mordant in dyeing textiles and as a curing agent in tanning. A comment on a previous post about…
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The sight of low cloud from Bilsdale pouring over the cols in the Cleveland Hills always leaves me with wonder
This is looking down on Green Bank, a flattish ring contour rise marking the head of Raisdale, and separating Cringle or Cranimoor from the steep slope up Carlton Bank. The col is nowadays more commonly known as the ‘Lordstones‘ on account of the country park. On the 22nd December 1892, the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough…
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Super autumnal lighting before what seems like an impending storm
But although it turned dark and winding with a bit of a drizzle I managed to get back to the car dry. I am on Cringle Moor, or Cringley Moor as it used to be called. This was pronounced in the vernacular ‘Creenay‘, which I guess why it was often written as Cranimoor. According to…
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An old holloway up Carlton Bank
I tried to use a little used Public Footpath which loops around from the foot of Carlton Bank to the now demolished Underhill House. But I became distracted by a mountain bike track and ending zig-zagging up through the trees eventually coming across an old holloway, well above the present road. Overgrown by gorse, it…
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Carlton Bank
I wrote just a few weeks ago about a farmer by the name of Joseph Hugill from Raisdale, who was attacked and robbed on his way home from Kirby. That was in 1892. 25 years earlier, another Hugill unfortunately died on his way home. A report in the Shields Daily Gazette, on the 12 Jan.…
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Brandy Well
John Fairfax-Blakeborough in his 1912 book with “Life in a Yorkshire village” writes: Speaking of superstitions reminds me of a tradition that the water in Brandy Well, half way up Carlton Bank, has most wonderful curative properties, and that a wish made here when drinking, is pretty certain to be fulfilled. The well is by the road side…
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Carlton Bank
It is hard to imagine that 150 years ago this would have been a scene of intense industrial activity. For over a century there had been quarrying of the Jurassic shales needed in the production of alum crystals for use as a mordant in the dyeing of textiles and as a tanning curing agent. Alum…