30/04/2026
Rosedale East Mines - a stunning landscape, and once a proper industrial powerhouse.
Work at the East Mines began in the mid-19th century, with the branch railway opening in 1865 to serve them. The kilns were used to calcine - or roast - the ironstone before it was sent away, and this became the last working section of the Rosedale ironstone field, carrying on until the 1926 General Strike and formal abandonment soon after.
That is what makes this place so striking. It looks open, quiet and beautiful now, but the hillside still holds the scale of what was going on here - mines, kilns, railway and all the noise and labour that came with them. It is one of those spots where the landscape and the history are impossible to separate.
