TRUE or false, a good story is hard to knock down. So, although it’s been struck potentially fatal blows quite a few times, not least by this newspaper’s esteemed Chris Lloyd in his popular Echo Memories column, it was no surprise to see the hoary tale of how the ironstone on the Eston Hills was discovered when the industrialist John Vaughan tripped over a rabbit burrow, while out shooting, resurrecting itself during the funeral wake for the Redcar steelworks.

What really happened was described by John Marley, a Darlington mining engineer who was with Mr Vaughan on that June day in 1850.

His account contains the germ of the rabbit- burrow myth: “Mr Vaughan and myself, having gone to examine the hills for the most suitable place for boring… On entering Sir JH Lowther’s grounds, a solid rock of ironstone was laid bare… Having once found this bed we had no difficulty in following the outcrop west as rabbit and foxholes were plentiful as we went.”

As the pair’s intention to bore makes clear, the existence of the ironstone was well known. In 1811, William Ward Jackson, of Normanby Hall, sent ore from the Eston Hills to a furnace on Tyneside, whose operator rejected it. Further samples the following year, from almost the exact site of the future Eston mine, also found no taker.

Later, Sir Hugh Bell, a leading Teesside ironfounder, wrote: “The merit of the original discovery of the main seam of Cleveland ironstone belongs to William Ward Jackson, whose endeavours to introduce it were frustrated by the prejudices of the ironmasters.”

Greater notice might have been taken of Jackson’s discovery had more been known at the time of the long history of iron-ore extraction and working in the Cleveland Hills and wider moorland area. In 1884 a paper delivered to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society referred to 48 primitive “bloomeries”, small furnaces, in the moors. Today, more than 120 have been identified – several from the prehistoric Iron Age – straddling the birth of Christ.

Amazingly, the very first blast furnace in the region – possibly the first in the North of England – was established in the shadow of the relatively recently-destroyed Rievaulx Abbey in 1576. For 70 years it provided sufficient iron not only for the Duke of Rutland’s Helmsley estate, but for sale on the open market.

Much closer to the ill-fated Redcar furnace, nodules of ore littering the shore between Scarborough and Saltburn were collected throughout the early 19th Century and shipped to Tyneside. It was probably this trade that encouraged Ward Jackson.

Mining proper began in 1836, at Grosmont, whose ore went to Tyneside. Ten years later, Henry Bolckow adopted this supply for his first Middlesbrough furnace, fed since its opening in 1841 with Scottish ore.

Middlesbrough progressed to become the iron-making capital of the world. The international price was set in its Exchange Building, lamentably demolished. Now, the demise of Redcar steelworks brings to an end the entire 2,500-year ironstone epic.

Painful to read are some bold words in The Story of Cleveland, published by the shortlived county council in 1979: “It is expected that the little town (Redcar) will by the mid- 1980s have one of the largest and most advanced steelworks in Europe. The Redcar complex is seen as essential if Britain is to play a leading role in world markets.”

Silence.