The two small parks at the end of Mansfield Road have had their fences decorated with reminders of the areas mining past by the Eston Residents Association
The panels depict miners tools, tubs, a midge lamp and a horse drawn tub.
Inside the parks are a couple of much older plaques from March 1951. One from Councillor J.T. Cook and the other J. Finegan (who the town hall is named after)
Only one of the two oak trees remains today.
Just to say that Mansfield Road was named after William Mansfield, the Cleveland Miners Association full time agent, and, between 1929 and 1931, Labour’s MP for the Cleveland Division (stretching from Hinderwell to Guisborough and all of what is today’s Redcar parliamentary constituency). He was a classic Labour MP of the time, and had to take on both Liberal and Tory opponents in 1929, only to be beaten when they combined in 1931 to set up the so-called ‘National Government’ under the convenient fig leaf of defecting Labour PM, Ramsay McDonald. It seems that some things never change.
And, as an afterthought, Jim Finigan is commemorated in the James Finigan Hall, next to the Town Hall – not the Town Hall itself. Jim, who I knew, was a fascinating guy who started off as a IRA volunteer in the Irish rebellion for independence in the early 1920’s, and after coming to Teesside in search of work in the 1930’s, became a one man agitator defending the rights of unemployed Teesside men and their families in the 1930’s. He died in the early 1980’s.
James Finigan Hall has a very good Wurlitzer Organ as it happens.