Hidden Teesside

The statue of ironmaster and mayor of Middlesbrough John Vaughan was sculpted by George Anderson Lawson and unveiled on 2nd June 1884.

There are four metal panels on the sides of the statue depicting various mining and industrial scenes.

Red Barns has the family home of Gertrude Bell, writer, traveller, political analyst, archaeologist.

Bell and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) helped to create the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan and define the outline of the modern state of Iraq.
 

The Zetland Lifeboat Museum houses the oldest surviving lifeboat in the world, from 1802

A coastwatch station, is located above the museum, they have a memorial plaque on the other side of the building

Redcar Pier was built in 1873, it suffered numerous mishaps with ship collisions, fires, deliberate breaching in WW2 , damage by a mine explosion and storm damage before finally being demolished in 1981.

The remains of the foundations can still be seen on the beach.

Update 22/07/09 - The location of the pier has just been marked with a new heritage plaque.

Sir William Turners school stood here from 1869 to 1963

Who knows what inspired the demolition of this attractive building to be replaced with the current Redcar library ’shed’

These bungalows built in 1931 were the first local authority homes for the elderly in the whole of England and Wales.

As a result they are actually one of the few listed buildings in Redcar.

The Victoria Pier was built in 1875 and intended to be 2000ft long, the Griffin and Corrymbus collided with it in a storm in 1874 before it was even complete and it was shortened by 200ft.

The pier had two two pavilions, the first an indoor skating rink. The second pavilion located in the middle of the pier, was for band concerts.

In 1898 the Birger collided with the pier,  splitting it in two and leading to its closure closed.

In 1923 the end of the pier was renovated and a glass and metal pavillion placed on top.

In 1928 this was in turn demolished and the New Pavilion Theatre built which finally became the Regent Cinema in the 1960s

The original 1846 Redcar railway station was located just near the town clock, its long gone and the site is now a modern building. However one of the new Redcar Heritage plaques has very recently been erected there.

 
The location can be seen marked as “Central Hall” in this previous post about the railway cottages

The clock was originally intended to be built for the coronation of King Edward VII but insufficient funds were raised and it was not built opened until 1913 after he died.

The clock was built on the boundary of Redcar and Coatham, William Duncan was the architect, Robert Richardson made the clock’s mechanism and the builder was John Dobson.

The opening ceremony took place on Wednesday 29th January 1913.

After many years of campaigning by Vera Robinson, the clock was finally restored to full working order in 2006

The Wainstones are a huge natural rock formation, very popular with climbers

There are vast formations such as one resembling a Sphinx head (note climber in for scale to the bottom right of the photo below right)

There are inscriptions all over the rocks, from very modern graffiti to much older beautifully carved names and dates.

There is an inscription somewhere which I failed to find and photograph that was alleged by antiquarians to be a memorial inscription to a slain Danish chieftain, although other explanations were later given that sounds a lot more plausible.

The whole area around Kettleness is heavily scarred by industry (despite now being very picturesque) there are workings for Jet, Alum, Ironstone and Cementstone all in a small area.

Ironstone was quarried on the foreshore and around the edge of the headland there are many inaccessible jet workings located high in the cliff.

Down at sea level there are also numerous jet workings accessible at low tides

Traces of jet can still be found in the rocks in the area

The headland has also taken victim much shipping over the years, with two wrecks identifyable.