PREHISTORIC MIDDLESBROUGH. 

 By W. Y. Yeitch, L R.CP , L.R.C.S. 



The scenery of the site, now occupied hy Middleshr<jiigh, 

 has presumably seen better days, and from Ijeiiig high undu- 

 lating forest-land, sustaining life of a kind very difl'erent from 

 its present denizens, it has evidently settled down to a 

 condition little lietter than a rescued tidal swamp. There are 

 physiographical evidences recording a series of ups and downs 

 in the remote past that merit investigation, and no doubt 

 will be found sufficiently interesting to lie worthy of some 

 kind of record. To best realise a picture tif the earl}' lands- 

 cape of the district the mind must be carried back to 

 pre-glacial times, when the present expanse of comparatively 

 level country, bounded on the North by the high ground of 

 Durham, and on the South by the Cleveland Hills, was a 100 

 feet higher than at present. The country slo]jing towards 

 the river formed, I am inclined to think, a valley somewhat 

 similar to Kildale, but because of the greater volume of 

 water flowing through it the channel was probably wider and 

 very much deeper for reasons to be presently mentioned. A 

 glacier coming down with irresistible force from the mountains 

 of the West has shorn the district almost level, leaving here 

 and there rocks scratched and grooved indicating the course 

 it had pursued, as noticed on the ironstone at Hob Hill and 

 on the limestone near Darlington, and more constantly 

 farther "West where the limestone is liarcd for qmu-rying. 

 The ice stream curried all before it until the resistance of 

 the Cleveland Hills deflected the current from Soutli-East to 

 East, and in doing so made Roseberry, Eston Xab, Hob Hill 

 and Whorlton outliers, and other portions of the hills were 

 left as promontories abutting into the neighbouring plain. 

 This kind of denudation has nowhere reached higher than 

 800 feet in this part of the country, thus it will lie easily 

 imagined that Roseberry Topping, which is 1,0.54 feet high, 

 would be an island in a sea of ice. The jue-glncial stream of 

 this water-shed was at Saltholme, at least 99 feet above the 

 present sea level, meandering in a valley about l,).T4feet 

 deep. Col. C. L Bell kindly sent me specimens of fossil 

 Wood and hazel nuts taken from the bouhler clay in boring 

 the Salt Wells at Saltholme at a de])th of 99 feet. As such 

 frail organic matter could not be carried far in the grinding 



