“The rover came back from a far distant land,
And he claimed of the maiden her long-promised hand;
But he built, ere he won her, the bridge of his vow,
And the lovers of Egton pass over it now.”
A pleasant twilight walk among the trees, within hearing of the rippling Esk, brought me back to the Tunnel in time for the last train to Whitby.
CHAPTER XIII.
To Upgang—Enter Cleveland—East Row—The first Alum-Maker—Sandsend—Alum-Works—The huge Gap—Hewing the Alum Shale—Limestone Nodules: Mulgrave Cement—Swarms of Fossils—Burning the Shale—Volcanic Phenomena—From Fire to Water—The Cisterns—Soaking and Pumping—The evaporating Pans—The Crystallizing Process—The Roching Casks—Brilliant Crystals—A Chemical Triumph—Rough Epsoms.
It was yet early the next morning when I descended from the high road to the shore at Upgang, about two miles from Whitby. Here we approach a region of manufacturing industry. Wagons pass laden with Mulgrave cement, with big, white lumps of alum, with sulphate of magnesia; the kilns are not far off, and the alum-works at Sandsend are in sight, backed by the wooded heights of Mulgrave Park, the seat of the Marquis of Normanby. Another half-hour, and crossing a beck which descends from those heights, we enter Cleveland, of which the North Riding is made to say,
“——If she were not here confined thus in me,
A shire even of herself might well be said to be.”
Hereabouts, in the olden time, stood a temple dedicated to Thor, and the place was called Thordisa—a name for which the present East Row is a poor exchange. The alteration, so it is said, was made by the workmen on the commencement of the alum manufacture in 1620. The works, now grimy with smoke, are built between the hill-foot and the sea, a short distance beyond the beck.
The story runs that the manufacture of alum was introduced into Yorkshire early in the seventeenth century by Sir Thomas Chaloner, who had travelled in Italy, and there seen the rock-beds from which the Italians extracted alum. Riding one day in the neighbourhood of Guisborough, he noticed that the foliage of the trees resembled in colour that of the leaves in the alum districts abroad; and afterwards he commenced an alum-work in the hills near that town, sanctioned by a patent from Charles I. One account says that he smuggled over from the Papal States, concealed in casks, workmen who were acquainted with the manufacture, and was excommunicated by the Pope for this daring breach of his own monopoly. The Sandsend works were established a few years later. Subsequently certain courtiers prevailed on the king to break faith with Sir Thomas, and to give one-half of the patent to a rival, which so exasperated the knight that he became a Roundhead, and one of the most relentless foes of the king. A great monopoly of the alum-works was attempted towards the end of the last century by Sir George Colebroke, who, being an East India director, got the name of Shah Allum. His attempt failed.