My lovely daughter sent me these two images of cows on Saltburn beach. They were taken in 1915 by a photographer called John Cimon Warburg using the Autochrome Process.
The process, invented by the Lumière brother at the beginning of the 20th century, involved covering photographic plates with different coloured potato starches. The plates were first manufactured for commercial use in 1907
Near, at Huntly Nabb, the shore (which for a long way together has lain open) now rises into high rocks; and here and there, at the bottom of the rocks; lie great stones of several sizes so exactly form’d round by nature that one would think them bullets cast by some Artist for the great Guns. If you break them, you find, within, stony Serpents wreathed up in Circles, but generally without heads.
Camden’s Britannia 1586. Translation & edition of 1722 by Gibson
Chalybes – The Chalybes or Chaldoi were a people mentioned by Classical authors as living in Pontus and Cappadocia in northern Anatolia during Classical Antiquity. Their territory was known as Chaldia, extending from the Halys to Pharnakeia and Trabzon in the east, the Chaldoi/Chalybes, Mossynoikoi, and Tubal/Tabal/Tibareni, are counted among the first ironsmith nations by classical authors.
On the coast between the Tees and Whitby there are two main high points, Warsett Hill above Brotton and Rockcliffe Hill above Boulby. These hills are also mutually visible, each with a group of Bronze Age barrows on their summits. The two summits are also intervisible with a number of moorland prehistoric sites.
There were once the remains of seven mounds on Warsett Hill but they have been ploughed-out leaving no trace on the ground. The group consisted of a cluster of six small mounds and one larger mound. The first recorded investigations of the group was by Canon Atkinson. Atkinson looked at the six small mounds and found nothing.
William Hornsby and Richard Stanton excavated the mounds in 1917, they found a few flints in the smaller mounds. The larger mound, which had been left untouched by Atkinson, was more fruitful. On opening the mound they discovered a ring of stones 30 ft in diameter, at the centre of which was a cremation burial with two food vessels. Other finds in this mound included a sherd of domestic pottery, a knife, a saw and many flints including scrapers, cores, and two leaf shaped arrowheads.
Sources
Pastscape.org.uk
Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 24. 1917
Bronze Age Barrows in Cleveland. G.M. Crawford. 1980
Map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Mortuary house was built to store bodies that had been washed up by the sea, prior to this bodies were stored in the nearby pub. The building was sandwiched between the Lifeboat house and the Rocket Brigade house, both of which have been demolished.
The people of the Bronze Age buried their dead on Warsett Hill.
Walking the field margins dreaming of axe blades and scrapers. The cliff top fields are littered with the remnants of Teesside’s second Iron Age.
The cliff edge creeps ever closer, the sea will eventually take the railway, just as it took the Roman signal station that was once on the edge of Huntcliff.
The Guibal fan house was built to ventilate the cliff top ironstone mine.
The Smell of Water 