Redcar
Part of Redcar's Promenade
Redcar today is a large town of some 37,600 people serving mainly as a commuter settlement for the wider Teesside conurbation. The town also serves as a sub-regional shopping, entertainment and service centre for the surrounding East Cleveland villages and has some small scale light industry located in estates at Kirkleatham, Warrenby and Dormanstown. The town is still relatively popular as a day trip destination for people from the more urban areas of Teesside. Small scale fishing activities continue to take place but the town is most probably more widely known for its Racecourse. Until the recent mothballing of the nearby Redcar Blast Furnace the town was also the home of the last steel making plant on Teesside.
The town appears to have its roots in the Anglo Saxon/Viking period based on place name evidence. According to experts the name combines Old English Hreod (meaning reedy marsh) with the Old Norse Kjarr (marsh characterised by scrubby bushes). So we can be sure the area was part of an extensive estuarine marshy area at the mouth of the Tees probably extending from Hartlepool to beyond Marske (Old English Mersc meaning Marsh).
Earliest documentary mention of the area refers to Coatham (Old English Cotum-place at the cottages), now incorporated into the wider urban area of Redcar. The two places were physically separate until the Victorian era with Coatham being far the most important as a fishing village. Documentary evidence relating to Redcar is sparse, with what remains mainly referring to market rights, fish tithes and feudal hunting rights. An early 17th Century manuscript describes the place as: “Redkarre as a verye poare fyshur towne…”
The two settlements seem to have trundled through the pages of history, remote in this obscure corner of north east Yorkshire with world events passing them by like the sailing ships on the far horizon going to more important places. The growth of Redcar and Coatham from minor fishing hamlets into what they have become today can be traced to the following factors:
· Tourism-the 18h Century fad for sea bathing to cure illness started the tourist industry, creating demand for accommodation and other attractions and facilities although the towns isolation meant this was small scale
· The Industrial Revolution leading to growth to accommodate iron and steel workers from the works at Warrenby and possibly ironstone miners at New Marske and Eston
· The development of cheap passenger railway travel enabling days out for the industrial working classes from Teesside and farther afield and also enabling people to travel to work in the growing Teesside towns. Tourist facilities developed during this period include the racecourse, two piers (now demolished) and public parks and esplanade walks.
· The post war development of the ICI Wilton site creating demand for housing of all types
Martin Jefferson March 2010