Teesside mans mining passion on film

Date: 2004-02-19, Publication: Evening Gazette

Craig Hornby can talk for Teesside. The words come tumbling out like hes swallowed the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Z inclusive.

He fires every single one with passion and pride.

Then he shoots a constant machine-gun rattle of them to describe his love for home town Eston, the people who live there and its glorious ironstone past.

If ever a man burned with a magnificent obsession, its 37-year-old Craig.

Its taken 15 years, but at last the Eston-born film-maker is ready to premiere his two-hour blockbuster documentary about Teessides forgotten mining heritage.

For the first time there on film is the amazing tale of how the areas iron and steel industry conquered the world.

A Century in Stone, will hit the screen at Eston Miners Institute on Tuesday before being taken on tour to pubs, clubs and village halls in the area.

Pretty soon we will be able to catch it on DVD and, when he gets round to it, there will be a book too.

Craigs labour of love details the story of the ironstone miners who flooded into Cleveland in the 19th Century, turning it into the world capital for iron and steel.

"Imagine that," he says. "The world capital.

"This is stirring stuff which will establish real pride in our place and a great sense of identity.

"I want to make a difference and this story shows that great things come from extremes and nothing can undermine us.

"There is no monument in Eston, which is shameful, and no monument in Middlesbrough to Dorman Long workers who built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is absolutely disgraceful.

"This film is about identity and learning about our magnificent heritage which our ancestors in Cleveland have created and has been neglected."

Craig calls the ambitious film, from his company Pancrack Pictures - named after the local name for the dole - "a digital monument which will be there for all time for all to see".

He hopes it will be around for centuries and says: "I found myself in a position to make something of pride and value for all time."

He can be proud that unlike many a monument, the film is a work of art to make the neck hairs bristle and the spine tingle with pride in a magnificent past.

Flicking through cuts in his Saltburn studio, Craig as writer, director and producer brings the story to life with a mix of reality, virtual reality and actors.

But, most important of all, are the eye-witness memories told by the fantastic men and women who remember in amazing detail what it was really like.

Craig filmed the few remaining ironstone workers, a nurse in the old Eston miners hospital and George Appleby, "a tiny man with a huge voice", now dead.

All vital voices which, without Craigs passion to preserve the past, would never have spoken to future generations.

After the three-minute college film, he persuaded tutors to let him go off and make the original, 25-minute A Century in Stone with a £1,000 grant.

It also helped win him - as the first North-easterner - an amazing £75,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) set up by the government and film mogul, Lord Puttnam, to nurture exceptional British talent.

He asked for only £50,000 but they surprised him with much more.

Which gives some idea of what they made of the lads grit on a meet-the-man visit to his tiny terrace in Middlesbroughs razor-wire and window bar zone.

Craig admits to being on the brink of personal financial disaster when the NESTA grant landed in the nick of time.

A turning point too was help from Janis Webster at Teesside Universitys Virtual Reality Centre which brought the Eston mining settlements to life again.

The money makes the budget for his first short stab at a history of the miners seem like "cherry bobs", he grins.

But Redcar and Cleveland Council was there too for the local lad when the going got tough with a £5,000 grant.

As a kid growing up in Eston, he roamed the bare hills where once the worlds richest seam of iron ore was mined.

On Eston Nab, young Craig and his pals played among the ghosts of Teessides ironmasters and the thousands of men, women and kids who worked to make them fabulously rich.

Not that he knew that then.

The landscape scars of a world-beating industry had all but healed.

But when the massive seam of quality ore was discovered, immigrants poured into Teesside to strike it rich.

Craig says it is a story which has never been fully told on film before and he was driven to the brink of financial crisis to make it happen.

Years earlier at art college in Middlesbrough, Craig was given an assignment to make a three-minute video of an event between 1850 and 1950.

And that was it. In the library he picked up a book about the ironmaster to beat them all, Bolckow, and he was completely hooked.

"It was a seismic. A great explosion in my head," he confesses. "Bolckow was the biggest ironmaker in the world, Middlesbrough the world capital and the iron ore was coming from Eston.

"The story of the whole thing just blew my mind.

"I realised there was a completely different world and it had been there all along in my own backyard."

That was in the late 80s when his steelmaker dad was fond of joking to art student Craig: "Youll never make money out of that son."

Now 15 years later, he has done more than that. And yes, says Craig, it is a big deal.

"I am obsessed with Eston and the history of the miners," he says.

Which has to be true. He gave up a promising film career in Toronto after meeting a movie mogul on his delivery round.

"He asked if I knew Cargo Fleet because he had bought a book about the place from a Teessider.

"Of course I did! We got talking and he offered me a job."

But waiting for his work permit brought him home "to my mams" and to fill the time, he set about his home-grown epic.

Among the first to see it will be Mr Eddy, his teacher at St Marys Junior School.

Then theres his mam and his welder dad, who, in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet-style, worked the world. They will be there bursting with pride.

And he hopes too that Teesside will turn out to see the epic and feel the pride of their heritage.

He is passionate about making a future right here on Teesside and wants desperately to prove it can be done without hitting the London scene.

"It is easy to go to London, but this is where the challenge is. This is where I want to make it.

"So many Teessiders leave and are doomed never to return. I dont want to do that. This is where I want to be."

The film can be seen at 7.30pm at:

Eston Institute, February 24; Whale Hill Community Centre, February 27; Eston Labour Club, March 3; Grangetown Neighbourhood Centre, March 8; Normanby Methodist Hall, March 10; St Peters Club, South Bank, March 16; Eston and Normanby Social Club, March 17; Lazenby Village Hall, March 19.

The screening will be followed by a rare showing of original footage from Dorman Long about the making of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There will also be an exhibition linked to Craigs film at each venue. Admission £2.50.

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