Inclined Tramway (Lower Building)

SALTBURN, MARSKE AND NEW MARSKE

NZ6621NE LOWER PROMENADE, Saltburn 802-1/8/43 (South side) 26/02/99 Inclined Tramway (lower building)

GV II*

Inclined tramway pay office and engine room, with waiting room now a shop. Opened 28 June 1884 for the Owners of the Middlesbrough Estate, correctly the Owners of the Saltburn Estates. Timber-framed front with painted render infill; rendered rear and sides; roof of light grey slates with pierced terracotta ridge cresting. PLAN: cruciform. EXTERIOR: single storey, 3 wide bays. Central gabled bay has Dutch doors to central pay desk and boarded doors to flanking turnstiles. Diagonal timber bracing to panels of framing, with overdoor panels blank; framing clock in gable peak. Bargeboards of pendant shaped sections with high turned spike finial. Engine room at left has boarded door; shop at right has shallow square projecting central bay, flanked by door at left and decorative framing at right, under catslide roof. Roof of central bay runs back to form gable over rear of cabin. All ridges have cresting and finials. Returns have pendant bargeboards in same style as central front gable. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORY: the third such system built in Britain, and the earliest surviving example. The first two, now demolished, were in Scarborough. Engine pumps water into cistern at top of cliff, from which it is transferred into upper carriage when weight is needed to allow descent. The lower carriage is pulled up by the descent of the upper. The water supply comes from a spring in the cliff. (Wilson CS: The History of Saltburn: Saltburn by Sea: 1983-: 85; Industrial Archaeology Review: Spring 1980: Harrison JK and Harrison A: 150; Lambaurgh District Council: Saltburn's Inclined Tramway (leaflet) quotes Cleveland News; Tighe MF: Cliff Lift, Saltburn by the Sea, Cleveland (typescript notes): Mere, Wilts: 1992-).

Listing NGR: NZ6661721707