Flatts Lane Country Park, Eston Moor and Eston Nab

The plateau of Eston Moor is a mixture of grass and moorland with downy birch trees and gorse bushes. The mixed habitat may feature yellowhammers, whinchats, and skylarks singing overhead, and you may also see kestrels soaring on the breeze looking for small rodents and other mammals moving in the undergrowth. There are also pheasants and red grouse, while curlews and redshanks may move onto the hill from the rich mudflats of the Tees Estuary.

At the summit of Eston Nab is a monument set within the site of an ancient hillfort. Built in the late Bronze Age, the site was abandoned when the Romans arrived and is believed to have been for lookout purposes only, as there is little evidence of a settlement. A beacon used to stand on the hilltop as one of a series built to warn of a possible sea invasion by the Spanish Armada.

From Eston Nab there are extensive views to the distinctive pointed Roseberry Topping and to the Captain Cook Monument on Easby Moor, and in the same direction the line of Cleveland Hills traversed on the Cleveland Way are also in view.

In 1850 two mining engineers discovered a thick seam of ironstone on Eston Moor. A mine was created, and the ironstone was transported through the hill with the railway below the beacon site. A community lived near the mine in two rows of terraced houses served by a small chapel; on occasion, food from the hamlet was brought through the mine and raised up the mine shaft to the workers. The seam has long been exhausted and the mine is now disused, having extracted 6.3 million tonnes of ironstone — giving Eston Nab its common moniker, "The Hollow Hill".

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.