Tag: ironstone mining
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Skinningrove: Facebook History and Other Unreliable Gossip
Yesterday’s descent of Hummersea Cliff into Skinningrove. Terraced houses cluster around Kilton Beck where it meets Cattersty Sands. Rocky breakwaters hold back the North Sea, which is doing its level best to reclaim the shore. The wooden shoring in the foreground is losing an argument with coastal erosion. Will this be the first instance of…
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The Last Traces of the Belmont Ironstone Mine
Green “Yorkshire” fields in early spring, and nothing here looks remotely industrial. Yet the three red-brick Edwardian cottages sitting neatly in the middle distance were built for the men who ran Belmont Ironstone Mine, and the large brick building in the distance was once the stables for the horses that worked underground. The large concrete…
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Cold Moor: A Close Brush with Industry
Cold Moor today looks like the sort of place that looks as though history slipped it by. Green, quiet, and peaceful. You would never guess how close it came to becoming a roaring industrial scar. In 1911 the calm nearly ended. Plans were laid to turn this part of Lord Feversham’s vast estate into an…
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Glaisdale’s Brief Age of Iron
Glaisdale began life as a quiet township within the parish of Danby, its name shifting through the centuries as Glasedale and Glacedale. Records from 1223 already linked it with the broad sweep of Glaisdale Moor, giving a sense of a place long settled into its landscape. For much of its history it has been a…
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Brackenberry Wyke: Low Tide Quarrying
Only when the sea has receded at low tide can one safely pick a path along the foot of the cliffs at Brackenberry Wyke. Here lie the ghostly remains of the old ironstone workings, where men once hacked at the exposed seams before hauling their spoil through an adit to join the great warren of…
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Nab Gill: The Lost Industry of Eskdale
Cross the little packhorse bridge by Eskdale Mill in Boot, glance left, and you will see stone ruins that have long been forgotten. The remains stand upon a loading platform, above the overgrown site of Boot railway station. These are the offices and works of Nab Gill Ironstone Mine, named after the great cleft high…
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The Lingdale Mine Disaster of 1953
On this day in 1953, Cleveland suffered its worst ironstone mining disaster. At Lingdale Mine, an explosion claimed the lives of eight men. The blast was sparked when the flame of an acetylene lamp ignited gas released by a rockfall deep underground. The morning shift had been underway when the fall occurred, 180 metres below…
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Clearing the Past: The Lost Drumhouse of Newton Wood
A morning with the National Trust, cutting back the summer growth from around the brick and stone remains known as the Kip, at the Cliff Rigg end of Newton Wood. The Kip is the remains of the head of a narrow-gauge tramway incline. Ore from Roseberry Ironstone Mine once hurtled down here under its own…
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The Slow Decay of Belmont Mine
It is disheartening to see the old mine buildings at Belmont Ironstone Mine partially collapsed. Built around 1909, they may not be the grandest examples of industrial architecture, but they are likely the most intact surface remains of any ironstone mine in the Cleveland area. Remarkably, some sections are still used as stables. In the…
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The Forgotten Incline of Ingleby Moor
I had heard the National Park was up to something on the old railway incline up Ingleby Moor, so I went to see what the fuss was about. This is not the famous incline that once carried ironstone from Rosedale. It is one that runs roughly 350 metres to the south, leading to the Ingleby…