Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Land of Iron – day trip to Skinningrove

The day will be a geologically flavoured day-trip to the Land of Iron Museum, Skinningrove Village and Hummersea beach, led by Liam Herringshaw and Paul Thornley.

We will meet at The Harbour/Way of St Hild Car Park at Skinningrove Village. TS13 4EE. Public Toilets nearby may be open. Parking in the adjacent housing area is permit only, so if the car park is full there is space south of ‘The Square’ on ‘New Company Row’.

10.30am. An exploration of the beach area, outcrops and Valley.

https://www.walkingloftusandthenorthyorkshirecoast.com/self-guided-walks

12.15pm Short drive to the Land of Iron car park and

12.30pm, Lunch – KasKane Café (next to Land of Iron)

https://www.facebook.com/KasKaneSkinningrove/?locale=en_GB

The KasKane café requires definite numbers confirmed before the day.

2-4pm. Land of Iron, formerly the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum, with tours underground /in the Drift (if open) and exhibition space on the history of the village and mining. Entry is £10, £7.50 (60+) or free if you have a current annual ticket for the Museum.

Opportunity for tea at KasKane Café before returning home.

The Land of Iron Museum needs definite numbers confirmed before the event. The YPS office has other priorities over the coming weeks, so payments for YPS and the cost entry to the museum should be handed to Catherine Brophy when we meet at Skinningrove on the day. Cash preferred. She will then arrange payment to the Museum.

To book, please send the completed details on the booking form by email to ypsgeology@gmail.com   (preferred)     Or return the booking form below to the YPS Lodge.

Land of Iron draft Flyer 2

YPS terms and conditions apply. See the website https://www.ypsyork.org/groups/social-group/yps-activities-booking-terms-conditions-2/  or ask at the Lodge

Image: Hummersea Beach by Land of Iron

Member’s report

The group gathered at the Harbour Car Park at Skinningrove Village on a windy day that threatened rain but stayed dry. There was a short delay, as some joining us found closed roads at Loftus, but Liam filled the time by collecting a few fossils and pebbles from the beach and giving an impromptu account of the geological history of the North East Jurassic Coast and the industrial past. Looking over to the East, Hummersea Cliff displays a number of Lower Jurassic layers, with the prominent line of the Cleveland Ironstone Formation standing out. Alum was quarried from the cliffs along this coast from the 1650s to just before the Cleveland Railway reached Skinningrove in 1865.

The village of Skinningrove developed from a small fishing community to a major industrial site over the course of 50 years. The main seam of ironstone was first seen in the Cleveland area at Skinningrove in 1847, but only shipped from the beach and taken to where most ironworks were in Durham and Newcastle at that time. With the arrival of the railway, the new drift mine (known as the Lofthouse or Loftus Ironstone Mine) was opened by Pease Partners and serious expansion took off. In 1873-4 the first blast furnaces were built on the hilltop west of Skinningrove and by 1880 The Skinningrove Iron Company was formed, using ironstone from the mine.

Between 1850 and 1865, similar ore had been discovered at Easton, between Redcar and Middlesbrough, and the first blast furnaces built at Middlesborough; the result was a huge expansion of ironstone mining from Guisborough and Loftus towards Whitby, with Grosmont and Rosedale important centres and ironworks and blast furnaces concentrated in Redcar, Middlesbrough and Grosmont. Joseph Pease, a railway pioneer, coal and iron mine master, played a major role in the development of Middlesbrough and was the first Quaker to take a seat in Parliament.

The group then walked west along the bottom of the cliff to the jetty, built in the 1880s for shipping the foundry iron produced. This came down the great incline from the Skinningrove Ironworks above. Looking along the cliff face we could see what looked like volcanic rocks, formed over years as rail wagons carrying still-molten slag used to tip it out off the end of the cliffs. The jetty was built of slag and hydraulic cement and when it was considered a risk to defence in WW1 it resisted all attempts to demolish it. Large practically intact balls of slag can be seen on the sides of the incline and at the bottom up to 2 metres in diameter.

There is a heritage trail through the village and the valley and a short trail with several mosaic and other installations organised by the Skinningrove History Group. There was only time to look at a few of them and to examine some uses of the blue scoria bricks (so often seen at the kerbside and back alleys in York). Made of slag from the blast furnaces, these were a by-product of iron-making designed to reduce the size of spoil heaps. In spite of the large numbers used throughout the area, no one appears to have got rich from the process.

We then moved up to the square at the back of the Land of Iron Museum for lunch at Kaskane’s Cafe, a lively and inexpensive place to eat. Those ‘Smoggies’ in the party relished the chance to order Middlesbrough’s famous Parmo – an education to the rest of us.

On to the Land of Iron Museum, which used to be called the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum. This was the site of the original drift mine which ceased production in 1958. (The last Cleveland ironstone mine at North Skelton closed in 1964).  Outside were the boards showing the complex infrastructure required to mine and move the ironstone around the valley including a zig-zag line to reach the main railway line and a viaduct to take ore to a neighbouring disused mine and up the vertical shaft to the ironworks, (this eventually became a steelworks, surviving nationalisation and still produces special steel profiles as part of the ‘British Steel’ Group).

At the Museum, we split into two groups alternately looking at the extensive exhibition of mining and village life in the area and being taken round the old industrial buildings by a guide. This latter involved viewing the shaft to the lower workings (now flooded), visiting the Sirocco fan and discussing the system of ventilation, showing the wagons – once drawn by horses – and experiencing the darkness that were the conditions in which the men and boys worked.

Paul Thornley