The co-ordinates should put you near a seat, an interesting piece of art made from cast iron and a ruined building. The last is all that remains above ground of the Huntcliff Ironstone Mine & the Skelton Shaft (Google it). Below you are miles of horizontal tunnels from which the iron ore was excavated.
Mining in the Cleveland Ironstone Field played an important part in the development of the Iron and Steel industries of the Tyne and Tees valleys, especially as demand rose in the 19th century for the shipbuilding and railway construction. Four main seams of Ironstone are found in the beds of the Middle Lias in the Cleveland area. These seams consist of micro-crystalline siderite (a mineral composed of iron carbonate FeCO3) together with variable proportions of mud and silt. The seams are thickest in the northern parts of the field and the topmost deposit can outcrop on the surface in places. It is known as the "Dogger Seam" and is extremely variable in quality and thickness. The colour varies from yellowish to dark brown or black, the latter being due to the presence of manganese (sometimes called manganosiderite) Beneath the “Dogger” at a depth of around 70 meters (200feet) is the "Main Seam", the most reliable and consistent deposit which can be up to 4 meters thick. This seam was discovered in 1850 by John Vaughan and John Marley and contains about 30 % Fe (Iron) but has a low lime content (around 5%) which made it necessary to add limestone at the furnace. Just below the Main Seam lies the "Pecten" or "Shelly Seam" named after the amount of fossils found in the stone. This is only a minor seam, being around 1.5 meters (5 feet) thick and a short distance beneath this is the even thinner "Two Foot Seam". The deepest level worked was the "Avicula Seam", named after a fossil bivalve that characterised the layer. This was mainly exploited at the south of the ore field in the Grosmont area where the main deposit is interspersed with bands of shale making it uneconomic to extract.
Some ten thousand men and boys were employed in over 80 mines and the peak production was in 1883 when over 6.5 million tons (imperial) of ironstone were brought to the surface.Huntcliff was one of the few mines that were on the coast. It was opened as a drift mine in 1872 and the Main Seam, here around 7 feet 6 inches (2.5 metres) thick, was worked by the “bord & pillar” method until the mine closed in 1906. At the base of the cliff near sea level there used to be workshops and stables and from these ‘drifts’ were drilled horizontally into the cliff around 200 feet below where you are now standing. The miners then branched out, creating a complex maze of passages (or bords), removing the ironstone in tubs that were hauled to the surface by a steam-driven rope system. From a ramp they were tipped into wagons on the railway that still runs from Boulby Potash mineline to Saltburn and beyond. The miners would then work back through the mine removing the remaining areas (the pillars) to complete the extraction of the ironstone.
The mining of ironstone in Cleveland continued until the 1960's and the last mine closed in 1964. This was at North Skelton which was the deepest of all the ironstone mines at 740 feet. The sandstone ramp beside the railway can still be seen, as can the concrete foundations for the steam engine used to haul sets of wagons out of the drift and up the ramp. The most obvious relict, however, is a roofless building on the opposite side of the railway to the Cleveland Way.
Not far from where you are standing at GZ there used to be a panel giving information about it but in 2021 if seems to have disappeared so now you'll have to google the information needed to claim this Earthcache. Just e mail me, along with your own e mail address, (or use the message facility - it's easier!) to say :-
(a) what the ruin was,
(b) how fast it turned and
(c)the nationality of its designer.
Also tell me
(d) what colour predominates in the most resistant layer of ironstone near the top of the cliff and
(e) Optionally post a photograph of yourself at the site. You can log your visit as a "find" for your straight away and I will contact you asap to let you know any errors if there are any.
For the artistically minded, the sculpture nearby is the Circle or Charm Bracelet by Richard Farrington, erected in 1990 as part of the Common Ground’s ‘New Milestones’ project. It represents aspects of local life and, amazingly (for it is incredibly heavy), the original ended up vandalised and at the bottom of Huntcliff in 1996!! There are two other Farrington sculptures in iron nearby. The next village on the coast south of here is Skinningrove. Originally a fishing village in the 16th century, in the 19th it became famous as the ‘Valley of Iron’ with iron works and its own mines. Its mine closed in 1958 and the building now house the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum which you might be interested in visiting if this is your overnight stop. All is peaceful today and fulmars now nest on the cliffs where slag once steamed.