Miles without Stiles: Rosedale Mineral Railway

History

This short out-and-back walk starts at the lower car park at Bank Top in Rosedale, passes the ironstone roasting kilns and follows a stretch of the old Rosedale Railway to a sculptural seat with a view across the dale. The National Park Authority says ironstone mining around Chimney Bank began in 1856, and that the Bank Top kilns were built to roast the ore with coal, a process called calcining that removed impurities and cut its weight by up to half before it was carried by rail, first to County Durham and later to Teesside. Ore was tipped into the kilns from the railway above them, and the row of terraced cottages passed on the walk was built for railway workers. The Authority says Rosedale's population rose from 558 to 2,839 in 20 years as the mines opened.

The Rosedale Railway, which the Authority says first opened in 1861, carried over 10 million tonnes of ironstone out of the dale before it closed in 1929; the Yorkshire Post gives its cost as £24,500, built by contractors for the North Eastern Railway Company. After closure the tracks were taken up and salvaged, and the trackbed has become a recreational route. The Authority's Land of Iron project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund between 2016 and 2021, conserved the Bank Top kilns and added interpretation. The seat at the end of the walk carries words and images devised by the local sculptor Vivien Mousdell with Rosedale Abbey primary school and the community, and was paid for by the Millennium Festival Fund.