Picture: Entrance to the North Drift

The Museum today offers visitors an opportunity to experience the underground world of a real ironstone mine and to explore the skills, customs and life of the Cleveland miner. It was these miners that helped make Cleveland the most important Ironstone mining district in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

One of the Museum's strengths lies in its knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides, who accompany visitors around the site:

- through the discovery of rock in the area
- through the cavernous ventilation spaces
- into the North Drift of the old Loftus Mine

It was through this drift that much of the 6.2 million tons of ironstone extracted from Skinningrove was hauled.

Visitors have the opportunity to hear the story of a Trappy Lad on his first day at work underground in the darkness and the friends that he made there.

Finally the tour finishes with the chance to explore an underground working place and see how the stone was drilled, charged with explosives and FIRED!

While visitors are waiting for the next tour, they are able to browse the Museum Gallery. This displays photographs of Loftus Ironstone Mine (where the Museum is located), the Miners and the local area during the mining era.

Picture: A group visit to the Museum

The Museum is located on the site of Loftus Mine in Skinningrove, which was the first Ironstone Mine to open in Cleveland. At its peak the Ironstone Mining industry supported some 82 mines, and the annual production peaked at nearly 7 million tons.

The Tom Leonard Mining Museum first opened in 1982, as a result of the enthusiasm and commitment of Tom, whose dream it was to see the setting up of a Museum devoted to the memory of the Cleveland Ironstone Miners and their industry. Sadly Tom died before the Museum opened, but a dedicated group of volunteers have kept the Museum open and managed to extend the areas of the Mine operations open to visitors and also to improve the interpretation for the public.

More recently the Museum has been going from strength to strength. It reopened in Spring 2000 following an extended winter closure to complete a project that dramatically improved the visitor facilities on site and helped to conserve the Museum buildings. This work was funded by ERDF, OneNorthEast and Redcar & Cleveland Council, and has ensured the buildings' condition for the future, as well as making a visit here an altogether more comfortable experience!

The most recent improvements have also raised the profile of the Museum as a valuable local resource, and many more schools are now looking to the Museum to link with the teaching of local history.