Two letters in the Evening Gazette

I have used these pages several times to attack some of our councillors for their lack of understanding about our industrial past, so I was pleased to read the Gazette article Hard act to follow (07-10-10) about iron men sculptures. Several times during the last few years the ironstone mining communities of Lingdale and Boosbeck have erected images that tell visitors about their ironstone mining past, at Boosbeck in July this year an Iron Man statue was unveiled and we were told that it was inspired by a young lad from the village, so I hope that young people like eight-year-old James Summers will be involved with the Iron Men, Woman and Children project, and the money isn’t given to artists from outside this region who have little understanding of our heritage. 12.10.2010

In 2004 I was a member of a group of volunteers called Iron Awe, together with film makers from Teesside University and 300 local children, we made a film about the Cleveland ironstone miners first Demonstration Day (gala) in 1872. This year we planned to make a similar film about the 1930s depression and its affect on the local mining communities. Our film will include Sir Michael Tippett’s first opera Robin Hood, which on the instructions of its composer, has never been performed for seventy five years.  Sir Michael Tippett died in 1998, but that didn’t stop the Iron Awe team from changing his wishes, assembling a choir, singing some of his music in a Boosbeck pub, and getting BBC Radio 3 to record the event. Unfortunately local funders didn’t think our project was worthwhile, so Iron Awe will try again next year. BBC Radio 3 is repeating Reviving Robin on Saturday 30^th October at 12.15pm. 26.10.2010

Letter in the local Paper

Dear Editor,
For years I have been complaining about the way the history of this region is been distorted, now that Teesside is been dropped, in favour of the more upmarket Tees Valley, it is even more important that museums in this region tell the story of our industrial heritage. Our steel and chemical industries are in trouble, the last of hundreds of blast furnaces is in danger of closing, just three miles away is Kirkleatham Museum, subsidised by thousands of people linked to our heavy industries. The only signs of the steel industry at the museum is an unnamed blast furnace tub near the entrance and an old steel ladle, covered in moss and ivy, behind the staff car park, the chemical industry across the road fairs even worse. Two years ago rare Saxon jewels were found in a field near Loftus, a few hundred yards away is an abandoned quarry, there are several similar ones in our region, where for 270 years men and woman, with little understanding of chemistry, worked in dangerous conditions to turn stone into crystallised alum, important for Britain’s wool industry. The museum that wants to buy and display the Loftus Saxon jewels makes no mention of Britain’s first chemical industry. Kirkleatham Museum does have a room telling the story of our ironstone industry, but a free museum shouldn’t be competing with volunteers from the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum and ignoring our other heavy industries. John Lawson