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In the first
century , the site of what is now Middlesbrough
, was a timber constructed church and a
settlement on a small hill rising sharply from
the river and gently sloping away to the south
surrounded by marshland.
It is said that the name Middlesbrough comes
from the fact that it was half way on the monks
journey from Lindisfarne to Whitby, in some
references it is called Middleberg.
After the conquest King
William 's army laid waste to the north
including the villages around Middlesbrough and
the settlement itself. In 1119 Robert de
Brus , who had aquired large tracts of land in
the area, gave the chapel at Middlesbrough to
the monks of Whitby so long as it was maintained
and occupied by its monks.
The Middlesbrough estate was purchased by
William Hustler in 1637 and it stayed in the
family until the land owned by the Hustlers was
divided by an act of parliament between the two
sons of the last surviving Hustler daughter .
William Peirse became the owner of the hamlet of
Middlesbrough, which was at that time a farm and
13 houses. William sold his share of the
land to Joseph Pease and Partners for 30,000
pounds in 1828. Around this time coal and
timber were being exported from staithes near
the Middlesbrough farm because this part of the
river gave deeper births than down stream at
Stockton. Joseph Pease and his partners
laid down plans for a new town to be created on
the land he purchased in 1828 and in 1830 the
first house was completed of the infant town.
Perhaps the most important persons for the
development and dramatic increase of
Middlesbrough as a town were Henry W.F.Bolckow
and John Vaughan. Joseph Pease persuaded
Bolckow and Vaughan to open an Iron works in
1841 to give the emerging new town an
alternative industry to that of coal exporting.
The export of coal at that time was starting to
be controlled by Hartlepool with it's deeper
port facility, closer rail access and closer
coal fields of Durham.
The Ironworks produced bars, rails and plate
from pig iron that was being produced at Bolckow
and Vaughans blastfurnaces at Witton park.Witton
park at this time was using ironstone imported
from the workings around Grosmont in Yorkshire.
In 1850 John Vaughan and his suveyor John Marley
discovered the ironstone outcrop above Eston and
started extracting it. At first the stone
was taken by rail to Witton park then brought
back as pig iron to Middlesbrough. This round
trip was stopped when Bolckow and Vaughan built
Blastfurnaces next to the river below Eston and
also at their Middlesbrough site. |
