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Mystery Pathway Of Wooden Posts On Beach In Redcar

maximus otter

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
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Elaine Froom was walking along the beach near the Zetland car park on Friday afternoon when she noticed the pattern of posts leading from the slipway into the sea.

The 49-year-old from Redcar said: "I think we all know about the petrified forest near the Beacon, but can anyone shed any light on what this could have been?

0_pier1.jpg


"In line with the slipway at Granville Terrace, it looks like it might have been some sort of walkway or bridge or pier.

"It's roughly about 510ft long and the bits of wood that are sticking up out of the sand are all in line with each other."

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/can-anyone-shed-any-light-19982102

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Elaine Froom was walking along the beach near the Zetland car park on Friday afternoon when she noticed the pattern of posts leading from the slipway into the sea.

The 49-year-old from Redcar said: "I think we all know about the petrified forest near the Beacon, but can anyone shed any light on what this could have been?

0_pier1.jpg


"In line with the slipway at Granville Terrace, it looks like it might have been some sort of walkway or bridge or pier.

"It's roughly about 510ft long and the bits of wood that are sticking up out of the sand are all in line with each other."

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/can-anyone-shed-any-light-19982102

maximus otter
Click to expand...
Well, it's probably just an old jetty that fell into disrepair and rotted away.
It is very long at 510 ft, I must say.
 
what happens at 510' out?

* links to shore
* just peters out
* can't be traced eg goes underwater
* stops with a flourish -eg bigger posts,
 
According to Google Maps, the mystery structure lies out / offshore of the Lime Road slipway.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir//54.6178445,-1.0596505/@54.6160381,-1.0533678,454m/data=!3m1!1e3

Nearby (out of frame to the left relative to the photo posted above) there's a series of groynes (wave abatement / beach protection structures) along the beachfront that similarly extend out into the water. It's therefore conceivable the line of posts represents the foundation for an old groyne structure.

However ... The apparent arrangement of post pairs makes me suspect this represents the bases for an old pier.

Whether pier or groyne, I suspect it had either disappeared by the time the slipway was built or else it was removed (chopped down to the sand surface) to prevent its being a hazard aligned with the slipway.
 
@Rynner!
 
I'd guess a walkway is a walkway, whether it's Bronze Age like some of the trackways across the Somerset levels or an eighteenth century jetty for mooring boats. Dendrochronology is the best thing to date it. That and checking whether the wood has been machine cut.
 
Line of a old salt sewer? we have 2 or 3 out on our beach
 
49 year old Redcar resident notices conspicuous feature on the beach at Redcar and gets her name in the papers! Everyone who regularly uses that slipway or fishes from that beach will be aware of those posts.

This has not just been exposed by a storm. The rocks shown in the photos in the news article have algae well established on them.

The photos are not very clear but the timbers look sawn to me. It is definitely nothing to do with a petrified forest, with those straight rows and even intervals.

I would expect piles for an old mooring pier to be thicker, and round in section. Also, this is too shallow for mooring. I would expect boats here either to be beached or recovered up the slipway. Mooring on an exposed shallow shore like that, with rocks just below the surface, would be inviting damage to the boat.

I doubt it was for navigation. That could more conventionally and easily be achieved with buoys or a small number of marker posts, and with leading marks ashore.

I can see no obvious reason for a walkway. Fishermen, cockle collectors and the like would walk and wade.

However, one possibility would be easy access to trip boats. Redcar "prospered as a seaside town" in the late 1800s.

The structure is not "in line" with the slipway, but at a slight angle across the direct approach to the slipway.

Looking at a map, the slip way appears to run roughly North East by North, and the feature appears to run roughly North East. That is not an ideal direction for a breakwater, and it is the wrong side of the approach to the slipway for it to be intended to provide a sheltered approach.

It does not appear to start at the foot of the slipway.

It may be the remains of a groyne: a structure designed to prevent the sea carrying sand along the shore and depositing it where it is not wanted. However, most groynes require only a single row of posts.

If it is the remains of the protection for a sewage outfall, it is surprising that the pipe is no longer there.

It does not appear likely to be a remnant of wartime anti-landing defences.

That only leaves "ritual significance" as the catch-all explanation.:chuckle:

I would be surprised if the original structure is not shown in some early black and white photos of the beach, assuming some exist. I did a bit of searching and found one possible match, but only as a thumbnail.
 
I've had time to look more closely at this. I think we may have a solution: a relatively short-lived Victorian pier:

Redcar-walkway-Fortean-01.jpg


OS 6" 1853: No pier

Redcar-walkway-Fortean-02.jpg


OS 1893: Pier

Redcar-walkway-Fortean-03.jpg


OS 1954: No pier

It's difficult to pin down the exact location of the walkway from the pics and description, but I think this might be a winner.

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
I've had time to look more closely at this. I think we may have a solution: a relatively short-lived Victorian pier...
Click to expand...

I looked at this yesterday, and initially thought the same.

However, on closer inspection I'm pretty sure that the pier is slightly further west than the line of timbers - which appear to be sited in line with the Lime Road Slipway. The location of the old pier was, I believe, the Esplanade - I believe the the site of the houses in the photograph accompanying the story is Granville Terrace - the gap towards the left hand side being where Lime Road intersects with the former.
 
maximus otter said:
I've had time to look more closely at this. I think we may have a solution: a relatively short-lived Victorian pier:
OS 6" 1853: No pier ...
OS 1893: Pier ...
OS 1954: No pier ...
It's difficult to pin down the exact location of the walkway from the pics and description, but I think this might be a winner.
Click to expand...

Nope ...

The mystery line of posts lies at the end of Lime Road. Check the satellite view to correlate the buildings shown adjacent to the slipway between the map and the posted photo.

The pier shown on your maps represents the big pier on the Esplanade - truncated by a fire and finally condemned / demolished after 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcar_Pier

The mystery posts are located circa 1000 feet SE of the old pier site.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I looked at this yesterday, and initially thought the same.

However, on closer inspection I'm pretty sure that the pier is slightly further west than the line of timbers - which appear to be sited in line with the Lime Road Slipway. The location of the old pier was, I believe, the Esplanade - I believe the the site of the houses in the photograph accompanying the story is Granville Terrace - the gap towards the left hand side being where Lime Road intersects with the former.
Click to expand...

lnteresting.

l looked at the maps, and found that Granville Terrace runs parallel to the shore; this left me scratching my head as to how the posts could “line up with it”, as they were clearly at ninety degrees (or thereabouts) in relation to it.

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
lnteresting.

l looked at the maps, and found that Granville St. runs parallel to the shore; this left me scratching my head as to how the posts could “line up with it”, as they were clearly at ninety degrees (or thereabouts) in relation to it.

maximus otter
Click to expand...

No, I stated 'in line with the Lime Road Slipway', which leads off Granville Terrace - at 90 degrees (or thereabouts).
 
maximus otter said:
I've had time to look more closely at this. I think we may have a solution: a relatively short-lived Victorian pier:

OS 6" 1853: No pier

OS 1893: Pier

OS 1954: No pier

It's difficult to pin down the exact location of the walkway from the pics and description, but I think this might be a winner.
maximus otter
Click to expand...

Great detective work! Looking at Google Maps and other sources, that's definitely the right location and the right alignment.

So it is now, "49 year old Redcar resident notices conspicuous feature that is clearly shown on old maps."

Wikipedia says Redcar flourished as a seaside town (tourist resort) around 1875. You've found it was't on the map in 1853 and was on the map in 1893. The time when it was built was somewhere around the period (a period, not a specific year) when the town flourished.

Small fishing vessels along the NE coast tended to be beached and hauled up when out of use. No one would want to unload a heavy catch along a 500 ft walkway. Larger vessels would need to use harbours.

I'd suggest that the rather spindly-legged, long and narrow pier was indeed to get holiday makers and day trippers out to the trip boats.

Mystery solved. (Unless of course it was aliens all along.)
 
Spookdaddy said:
No - I said in line with the Lime Road Slipway, which leads off Granville Terrace - at 90 degrees (or thereabouts).
Click to expand...

:doh:

:bdown:

:mcoat:

Whatever serves me as a brain remembered “In line with the slipway at Granville Terrace...” from my OP.

I’ll shut up now...

maximus otter
 
Mikefule said:
Looking at Google Maps and other sources, that's definitely the right location and the right alignment...
Click to expand...

I really don't think it is.

Check out the line of houses on the photograph, and have a google street view bimble along the Esplanade (site of the old pier). They clearly don't represent anything there, however they do clearly correspond to the east end of Granville Terrace.

(I think the fact that there's a correspondence in the way High Street and the Esplanade, and Granville and Lord Street converge helps confuse the issue.)
 
The biggest mystery here is why nobody at the Gazette just looked up an old map and put the answer at the bottom of the article.

I guess we're all a bit bored in lockdown. I'm surprised the paper wasn't inundated with 'why was she out of the house? Doesn't anyone know there's a LOCKDOWN?' and lots of local frothing about people being outdoors for more than ten minutes.
 
catseye said:
The biggest mystery here is why nobody at the Gazette just looked up an old map and put the answer at the bottom of the article...
Click to expand...

It doesn't seem to be marked on any maps, unfortunately. I'm kind of inclined towards some local comments which suggest - rather unglamorously - that it's some remnant of an old sewage outflow (possibly some sort of timber cradling).

(I wonder if there might be an underlying issue with people walking a lot more than they ever used to, and therefore noticing things that they haven't before - and believing that this, in and of itself, makes them noteworthy.)
 
Spookdaddy said:
(I wonder if there might be an underlying issue with people walking a lot more than they ever used to, and therefore noticing things they haven't before - and believing that this, in and of itself, makes them noteworthy.)
Click to expand...

I think this is probably the case. Although this is a slight mystery and therefore vaguely worth mentioning. I'm fairly sure there will be an elderly Redcarrian who will be along at some point to sniff and tell everyone that it marks the channel they hauled the crab pots up or something though. It doesn't look old, just forgotten.

Like me.
 
The old Redcar Pier from the air:

Redcar Aerial View (1).jpeg


It's in line with Clarendon Street - which you can't really make out on the photo. However, there's a blue plaque and an anchor indicating the site both quite clearly visible on Street View. The general layout of the buildings on the Esplanade at this point seems to be more or less unchanged.
 
Still think it's from a sewer, in the aerial shot the triangular shape at the side of the slipway with the
dog bone shape sticking out looks like a outfall to me likely a overflow for top water in times of
heavy rain, probably utilising the old sewer system that originally went out to sea.
 
Yes, it's going to turn out to be something prosaic and boring and ordinary, but at least it's keeping us from Netflix for half an hour or so.
 
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