User:Prioryman/Eston Hills

{{Geobox|Range}} The Eston Hills are a range of hills located between the towns of Middlesbrough and Guisborough, adjoining the Redcar suburbs of Eston and Normanby. The highest point on the hills is Eston Nab, a well-known local landmark, at 242 metres (794 ft). The hills are an outlier of the Cleveland Hills to the south and have a similar geological composition, having been laid down during the Jurassic era. They have been inhabited for many years and are the site of Bronze Age burial mounds and an Iron Age hill fort. The hills were an important source of iron ore during the 19th century and were heavily worked for many years. Today they are a popular destination for walkers, with panoramic views over Teesside, and represent a rare and significant wildlife habitat.

Geography

The Eston Hills comprise three sections running in an east-west direction from Upleatham in the east to Ormesby in the west, covering a distance of about 6.5 miles (10.5 km) with a maximum width of about 2 miles (3.2 km). The north flank of the western section of the hills is characterised by a steep escarpment, with gentler slopes on the south side towards Guisborough. The hills begin in the west with a shoulder of high ground on the edge of Ormesby. A gap in the hills exists a short way to the east between Normanby and Upsall. Here the hills are crossed by a road (Flatts Lane) and a disused railway line (the former Cleveland Railway). The high ground continues to just south of Wilton. East of this part of the hills, a gentle slope descends to Dunsdale and the narrow, steep-sided valley of Tocketts Mill Beck. Further east still, the land rises again to a steep upland area flanked by woods, which forms the eastern end of the chain.

Map of the Eston Hills (Ordnance Survey, 1948)

Geology

The hills were laid down during the Jurassic era, 206 to 150 million years ago, when the Eston area was submerged by a warm, shallow sea and was later the site of a river delta. The sedimentary rocks of the hills comprise a mixture of mudstones, shales, siltstones and sandstones. They are part of the Lias Group of sedimentary rocks found across much of north-western Europe and can be subdivided into Lower, Middle and Upper Lias, reflecting changes in the environments in which they were deposited.

The earliest rocks are part of the Redcar Mudstone Formation and originally comprised part of the seabed. Later, fine-grained sand and siltstones – part of the Staithes Sandstone Formation – were deposited, before being buried by the Cleveland Ironstone Formation. The Main Seam of ironstone, from which much of Cleveland's mineral wealth would later be derived, was at its thickest here with a maximum thickness of 3.4 metres (11 ft). The ironstone was buried in turn by the Whitby Mudstone Formation at the end of the Lower Jurassic. During the Middle Jurassic a series of sandstones were deposited, including the Dogger Formation, Saltwick Formation, Cloughton Formation, and the Scarborough Formation. The latter was formed when the sea level rose and flooded the Eston area for a period.

History and archaeology

Early habitation

Plan of the Iron Age hill fort at Eston Nab.

The Eston Hills have been inhabited since the Stone Age. Nomadic hunter-gatherers lived there during the Mesolithic period about 10,000 years ago and left evidence of their presence in the form of flint shards, arrowheads and scrapers.

The hills have been farmed since at least 2400 BC. By about 1400 BC the tree cover of the hills appears to have largely been cleared and replaced by fields, farms and grazing land for sheep and cattle. As elsewhere in England at the time, the people built numerous round barrows on the hills to serve as religious monuments and territorial markers. High-ranking members of the local tribes were cremated and interred in pots beneath the barrows.

The population of the area appears to have increased substantially during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, spurring an expansion of the field systems on the hills. The inhabitants established defended settlements such as the hill fort on Eston Nab. The fort was established on the highest point of the hills with sweeping views over the surrounding countryside. In its first phase, it comprised a palisade surrounding a cluster of round houses built in the middle Bronze Age. Around 400 BC the fort was enlarged substantially to cover an area of 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres). The north side faced the cliffs overlooking Eston, while the south was defended by an earthwork about 400 metres (1,300 ft) long consisting of a bank, ditch and counterscarp bank. It was originally entered from the south-east. Like other Iron Age hill forts, it was not permanently inhabited but seems to have been used as a place of refuge in times of conflict.

Around this time, in the late Iron Age, the cultivation of the hills appears to have been abandoned. This may have been due to erosion which forced the farmers to move to lower ground. The hills became an area of heath and moorland.

The "Iron Rush" and after

The Eston Hills became a focus of attention again in the 19th century. During the Napoleonic Wars, a watchtower and beacon were built on Eston Nab and were later reshaped into a monument that still stands today. In 1850, the Middlesbrough ironmaster John Vaughan discovered a rich seam of iron ore on the scarp slope. It turned out to have the highest iron content in Cleveland, at 33%, and triggered a great "Iron Rush" that was to bring considerable wealth to the area. Miners flocked to Eston to work in the newly opened mines along the length of the hills. The parallels with the simultaneous California Gold Rush were so obvious that the area of Eston where the miners settled was nicknamed "California" – a name by which it is still known today.

The mining took place on a massive scale. In the first year, 4,000 tonnes were extracted; 188,000 in the second year; and by the sixth year, 1856, over 560,000 tonnes a year were being extracted. The ironstone was extracted by the room and pillar method and was transported from drift entrances to the Tees via a network of mineral railways. The Cleveland Railway running through the hills and along their south flank was opened in 1861 to transport iron ore to a jetty at Normanby. Mining continued on the Eston Hills until 1949, by which time over 63 million tonnes of iron ore had been extracted. Many remnants of the hills' industrial past can still be seen, including mine entrances, buildings and the course of the now-dismantled railway lines.