Wandering Upper Teesdale with Graham Vasey looking for an outcrop of the Cleveland Dyke.
Hudeshope, Elphatory Allotment, Coldberry Gutter, Cleveland Dyke, Harberry Hill, Pikestone, Skears, Brown Dodd
Mining
A Remnant
A remnant from the local ironstone mine, rock drill bits repurposed on Saltburn allotments.
Asda, Aldi & an Ironstone Mine
I took a walk over to Skelton to have a look at the remains of the Longacres Ironstone Mine located on the edge of the Hollybush Industrial Estate. I followed the waterlogged track over the fields towards the retail park.
Most of the field is covered in small trees and brambles. There’s a large earth bank running across the field, the result of the levelling of the site to build the retail park. The occassional chunk of concrete pokes through the undergrowth but on the whole nature is doing a decent job of reclaiming the site. A small pond containing bulrushes has formed at the foot of the bank.
Between Asda and Aldi a track leads up the bank into a small wood.
The arched concrete roof of the mine’s explosive store is just visible from the bank top. The building is buried into the bank, with no obvious access from above I followed the path down into the wood.
A pair of large gateposts marking , the entrance to a tiny litter-strewn concrete-walled dell, day-glow pink graffiti marks the territory of the ‘Skelton Possy‘.
The overhanging foliage has been cut-back to allow access, tall curving concrete walls lead to a blockhouse, The bank and walls deaden the sounds of the nearby retail park. It has the air of a strange brutalist hermitage.
On the top field, the mine buildings have been cleared, the area is now used as a rough cycle track and hangout for local kids. The path at the bottom end of the field follows the embankment of the old railway branch line.
In an adjacent field the mine shaft is capped with an oval stone and brick wall, there are remains of campfires around its base. A nearby former engine bed provides a viewing platform.
The mine operated from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. More information can be found here
Maggra
Walking from Boosbeck to Margrove Park, known locally as Maggra, the path follows the route of the old Guisborough to Brotton branch line. The line was opened in 1865 servicing the East Cleveland ironstone mining communities.
Hidden in the woods beside the path is one of the kilns from Carrs Tilery which operated from 1867 until 1879 and produced land drains, pipes and tiles for the Skelton Estate and the local ironstone mines.
Pipes produced in the the kiln can found in the undergrowth. The buttresses supporting the walls appear to be later additions.
I’ve been unable to find out if there is any level of official protection on this building.
Remnants from the past and present
The ponds are now a nature reserve managed by the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust, beautiful orchids line the footpath.
This area was once home to a thriving mining community with an ironstone mine located at each end of the small valley. The few structures that remain of this industry and being allowed to decay, which is a shame when so little is left.
Boosbeck
Bosbek 1375 Barbour’s Bruce
‘Stream near the cowshed’ from OE bos(ig) and bekkr.
Margrove Park / Maggra Park
Magerbrigge 1230-50 Guis
Maugrepark 1407 YI Maugrey 1575 FF
v. pearroc. The form Maugre– possibly indicates that the first element is the OE pers. name Maepalgar; cf. Meagre
Sources
The Place Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire by A H Smith. 1928
Thanks to Chris Wynn
Durham Dales – Stanhope
Stanhope DU [Stanhopa 1183 BoB, -hop 1228 Ep]. ‘Stony HOH or ridge and HOP or valley.’
Graham and I drove up into the Wear Valley to Stanhope to have a look at the wonderful fossilised tree in the churchyard of St. Thomas’s church.
The 320 million year old fossil was found by quarrymen at a sandstone quarry at Edmundbyers Cross in 1915. It was originally taken to Newcastle and was brought to Stanhope in the 1960s and placed in the churchyard.
This is a superb relic of one of the trees that grew in the Carboniferous forest. It is a species known as Sigillaria, an early ancestor of modern club mosses. Today clubmosses are small mountain plants, only a few centimetres high, but in the tropical swamps of the Carboniferous Period they grew into 30-metre high giants!
Another fossil tree recovered from the sandstone quarry can be seen in the Hancock Great Northern Museum in Newcastle.
While here we thought we’d take a look inside the church. This was a very different building to the previous church we had visited at Escomb. St. Thomas’s is a very well endowed church and reflects the fortunes that have been made from farming and mineral extraction in the district.
The first thing you notice when you enter the church is the Victorian baptismal font. Beautifully carved in Frosterley marble with an extremely ornate cover complete with an over-engineered lifting mechanism.
Frosterley Marble has been used on the chancel floor.
Frosterley marble isn’t a true marble. Marble is a metamorphic rock, i.e. a rock that has been altered from its original state by temperature and pressure. Frosterley marble is merely a highly fossiliferous limestone, that when cut and polished forms a highly decorative stone.
Fossil – Laing Art Gallery Newcastle
This sculpture is a carved block of Frosterley Limestone inset with cast bronze interpretations of the fossils found within it. The fossil installation is displayed on an oak plinth among the Frosterley floor tiles and oak doors and display cabinets in the Marble Hall of the Laing Art Gallery. The sculpture is finished on one side to reflect the smoothness of the floor tiles and the central section shows and explains the unusual shapes seen in the tiles with carved and truncated fossils. The third section is a representation of a carboniferous sea floor with ‘living’ dibunophyllum bipartitum cast in bronze. The Department of Coelenterates at the Natural History Museum in London offered invaluable advice in establishing the most accurate representation of ‘dibunophyllum’.
This ancient stone coffin in the grounds of the church was carved from a single block of Frosterley marble.
The only true marble in the district is to be found in Upper Teesdale. A limestone which was subjected to heat and pressure from contact with the igneous rock that forms the Whin Sill. The resultant rock is known as Sugar Limestone. It is quite crumbly in nature and therefore pretty much useless as a decorative stone.
It was nice to see this Roman altar displayed inside the church. A translation of the inscription is provided, it reads..
To Silvanus, the invincible, sacred
Caius Tetius Venturius Mecia
Prefect of the Sebosian Cavalry
On account of a boar of enormous
size taken which
many of his predecessors
were not able to destroy, erected (this
altar) willigly in discharge of a vow
The town of Stanhope is surrounded by quarries and the valley has a long history of lead mining and smelting. Spoil heaps from the quarries encroach onto the margins of the town but I can find very little evidence in the church of the people who worked in the quarries and mines of Weardale. We left Stanhope and drove up the dale to visit the Rookhope Arch.
The arch is all that remains of a two mile long horizontal chimney or flue. The flue carried the toxic gases and fumes from the lead smelt mill to the moortop. Mill workers were periodically sent into the flue to dig out the deposits. The average life span of a lead miner in 1860 was 45 years. Perhaps this ruin is a more fitting memorial to their lives than some mossy obelisk in a churchyard
Sources
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. 4th Edition. Eilert Ekwall. 1974
North Pennines AONB Geoparks Leaflet
Laing Art Gallery – Topografik
A Remnant
Kilton
A remnant from the age of iron
Kilton Ironstone Mine
1870 – 1876 Kilton Ironstone Mine Company
1894 – 1916 Walker, Maynard & Company
1916 – 1963 Dorman Long & Company
Source – Catalogue of Cleveland Ironstone Mines. Peter Tuffs. Industrial Archaeology of Cleveland. 1996
Cockfield Fell
Cockfield Fell is described as “one of the most important early industrial landscapes in Britain”. In addition to four Iron Age (or Romano-British) settlement enclosures, there is evidence within the landscape of early coal mines (the Bishop of Durham licensed mining here at least as early as 1303), medieval agricultural field patterns, centuries of quarrying activity, a railway line established in the 1830s and several earlier tramways All together, Cockfield Fell constitutes England’s largest Scheduled Ancient Monument, described as ‘an incomparable association of field monuments relating to the Iron settlement history and industrial evolution of a northern English County’. One reason for its preservation – unusual for a lowland fell – is that it was not subject to enclosure in the 18th or 19th centuries, perhaps due to its highly industrialised past. Source
The fell is ablaze with fragrant golden whin
The Cleveland Dyke outcrops on the fell and was quarried for roadstone.
The remains of the Gaunless Viaduct
Gaunless ME gaghenles ‘useless’ (from ON gagnlauss). The name may refer to scarcity of fish or the like. English Place-Names. Eilert Ekwall. 1959
Coal was mined on the fell from the early medieval period until the late nineteenth century
Beehive coke ovens on the valley floor
A beautiful Cob keeps me company
Map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Many thanks to Graham Vasey for showing me around this wonderful place
Returning to Swaledale
Graeme Chappell, Graham Vasey and I had a wander around mid-Swaledale
The slow realisation that navigation is not my strongpoint.
Nature reclaims the poisoned land, only the lead-rich slag lays bare.
Soundscape – A field of wild geese and curlews .
The Big Meeting
The Smell of Water 