A MULTI-million pound scheme to conserve monuments and heritage sites, celebrate the industrial heritage of a national park and improve the natural environment could be expanded.

Leaders of the £3.9m project in the North York Moors National Park said following a successful first year, it was hoped to secure further funds to extend the project, which had initially been constrained by red tape.

The four-year scheme is focusing on an area from Goathland in the east, following George Stephenson’s original rail route north to Grosmont, before turning west along the Esk Valley to Kildale, and over the moors south eastwards to Rosedale.

A meeting of the North York Moors National Park Authority heard work to record and conserve a range of monuments and heritage sites has started on Rail Trail Bridges and at sites such as the Esk Valley Mine and Warren Moor mine, the latter being the only Victorian ironstone mine chimney still standing in the UK. Next year will see action to tackle the crumbling kilns at Rosedale.

Teesside University is supporting a graduate intern programme for computer games designers to build virtual 3D models of heritage sites, such as the Rosedale kilns, when they were operational. These will be displayed to the public at a new exhibition centre at the Moors Centre in Danby next year. 

Members were told a feasibility study was underway on water voles and the potential for a landscape-scale mink control and water vole reintroduction programme.

Members questioned why the scheme had not covered a wider area, given the array of nearby iron industry-related heritage sites, such as the mines at Great Ayton.

Tom Mutton, Land of Iron programme manager, said said the scheme had been limited to a 77 square mile area of the national park to fit in with Heritage Lottery Fund criteria, but with other sources of funding, such as from the Sirius Minerals polyhalite mine, the area in which work is undertaken could be extended.

He added: “The Cleveland Ironstone story is so massive compared with ours, it’s the same seam of ironstone, but a different side of the hill. There’s a much bigger story to tell and the visitor doesn’t see that boundary line, they see the mine or piece of industry in the Cleveland and North York Moors area.”