Looking Back

I have been involved with dozens of storytelling projects, and once we start collecting stories its surprising how small the world seems. I have been looking at songs with the title Heartbreak Hill; Fats Domino, The Strawbs and Emmylou Harris have all recorded different tracks, the one below was co-written and is sung by Daisy Hicks an Australian who was born in England.
Mick Benson, a key member of the Iron Awe team, is director of the Ryedale Folk Museum and lives in East Cleveland, I regularly go with him to the museum and do volunteer work. The twenty mile journey includes going over Blakey Ridge a twelve mile stretch where the only building we pass is The Lion Inn.
In the early 1970s a three piece jazz band called Back Door started playing regular sessions at The Lion Inn, they quickly became popular and played at Ronnie Scott's Club in London, Colin Hodgkinson, the bass player, was a southerner, but Ron Aspery, the saxophonist, and Tony Hicks, the drummer, were both from Middlesbrough. The band split up in the late 1970,s and Tony Hicks took his family, including young Daisy, to Australia. Tony sadly died there in 2006.
When Back Door travelled from Middlesbrough to Blakey they would pass our Heartbeak Hill, they would also drive over holes in the earth where Cleveland miners had taken away the ironstone that became the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so although the links are tenuous, they are there - anyway its a nice song.


I am an unpaid storyteller, occasionally I get expenses for my work, but mostly I don’t. I want the world to know about the history of my part of the world and I always give credit to people for the work I use. This video was put on You Tube with buttons allowing it to be shared and before it was removed I was sharing it. John Lawson 03-08-2011


This is Back Door playing at The Lion Inn Blakey in 2003 - turning the clock back thirty years.


Middlesbrough born Chris Rea is closely related to Tony and Daisy Hicks.
This is Chris singing Steel River, a song about the river Tees.
(There would be no Steel River without the Cleveland ironstone miners.)

The Big Debate

In 2004 I was given a book of ironstone mining rules, it had been found in the mine managers house at the old Whitecliffe mine. The first rule read "After the 1st July 1861, it shall not be lawful for the owner of any mine or colliery, to employ any male person under the age of twelve years. A boy above the age of ten years and under the age of twelve years, may be employed in a mine or colliery upon either of the following conditions, that is to say:- that before any such boy is so employed the owner of the mine shall,obtain a certificate under the hand of a competent schoolmaster that such a boy is able to read and write; Or, That the owner shall obtain a certificate under the hand of a competent schoolmaster that such a boy has attended school for not less than three hours a day for two days in each week."

In 2005 I became a volunteer at the Ryedale Folk Museum and with the help of Leavening Primary School, we used the above rule to help us make a film about trappy lads going to school. The film can be seen on the Ryedale Folk Museum website;

Photographs from the film

The Accident

In 2003 we worked with 20 children from Hummersea Primary School, Loftus and made a film called The Accident, the film was based on one of the stories from the East Cleveland Memories project,about hero "Abe." The film won the Roots and Wings award, the award was presented to us in The Royal Society of Arts building in London by Estelle Morris M.P. Minister for the Arts and by Loyd Grossman.





Photos from the film, premiere and the award.

East Cleveland Memories

In 2001 I was one of five volunteers who started an oral history group called East Cleveland Memories. We recorded stories of local people, and with the help of a local museum and a Newcastle based group called Tomorrow's History, we put some of these stories on the Internet. With the help of a printer from the local church, we published 300 hundred books.

Hear some of the stories on the Tomorrow's History website;