Why do the names Zetland/Dundas permeate throughout Redcar and Cleveland, Teesside and further? Where did they come from and where did they get their wealth? It’s a murky old tale that leaves some tricky questions for the elected members of our region to consider.
Newcomen, Turner, Lowther, Pennyman-names that have a resonance in Teesside today, reminders of long-gone local landowning aristocratic families leaving a handful of historic buildings, roads, pub names, schools and parks bearing their names. But there are two names that appear in virtually every settlement in Redcar and Cleveland and indeed the wider Teesside conurbation and beyond Zetland and Dundas. Whilst the older dynasties collapsed this lot through power, influence and sheer wealth trumped everybody and still live in a grand house on a grand estate many miles from Teesside.
A vile trade
The two names are in fact the same. Dundas is the family name of the Barons, Earls and Lords of Zetland, who through strategic acquisition, marriage, luck and wealth accumulation became owners of large amounts of the North Riding of Yorkshire and lords of the manor to many by the end of the 19h C. Their name and legacy are everywhere, widely regarded as one of the benign, paternalistic benefactors of Redcar and beyond. All well and good until it appears that, unlike their local contemporary landowning aristocracy, some of the Dundas’ family wealth came from a vile trade.
The Dundas family seems to have been especially adept at climbing both greasy poles of massive wealth accumulation and social position. Starting off from relatively modest roots trading as a wine merchant Sir Lawrence Dundas of Kerse, first baronet (1712–1781), is regarded as the most significant founder of the dynasty. Amongst his vast national and international business, land and property interests were joint ownership of two estates on the islands of Dominica and Grenada in the Caribbean. The innocuous term estate means slave plantation.
British descendants of slaves paid compensation to slave owners
When slavery was finally abolished in Britain and the colonies in 1834 the government paid around £3bn in today’s money to compensate slave owners and not their victims. The Government had to borrow the money, and that loan became incorporated into the national debt.
That element of debt was only paid off in 2015- so UK tax paying British descendants of former enslaved people have ended up paying compensation themselves to slave owners!
Cash for dubious honours
Records show that at the time of abolishment joint ownership of the slave plantations was held between Lawrence Dundas, 1st Earl of Zetland (then 2nd baron Dundas) and his brother the Honourable (sic) George Heneage Lawrence Dundas, resident of Upleatham Hall. Lawrence’s elevation to the peerage was a straightforward matter-he lent Queen Victoria’s parents money and in return he became the first Lord Zetland in 1838, a year after Victoria became Queen. Cash for honours it would seem is an ageless phenomenon.
Unlike his brother luck was out for George who would not live to enjoy his compensation for enslaving human beings-he died of a stroke in Upleatham Hall in 1834 and brother Lawrence claimed his share as his heir. Already very rich from the profits of human enslavement, the taxpayer then paid them the equivalent of between £850,000-£1.4m (depending on which conversion is used) in today’s money in compensation for their joint ownership of the property comprising 351 enslaved people.
Note that was 351 slaves alive at the time the compensation claim was made, it is likely that during the duration of the Dundas’ family ownership many more non-white people were enslaved, forcibly trafficked, existed, toiled and died on their estates, probably at least 1,000.
A nice earner
The current Zetland/Dundas dynasty acquired the wealth and titles through familial relationships following the death of the First Lord Zetland. By sheer good fortune some of the land the Zetland’s had acquired over the generations, unbeknown to them, contained a then valuable mineral deposit deep within the earth-iron ore.
The exponential expansion of the railways from 1825 onwards and the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution led to a huge demand for basic cast and milled iron and steel. The medium to low quality ore under their land became economic to mine and iron works began sprouting along the south bank of the Tees providing a ready nearby market for the ore, connected directly from the mine entrance to the furnaces on steam powered railways.
The Zetland’s cashed in and leased large areas of the Eston Hills and East Cleveland to assorted speculative mine owners and ironmasters. The Zetland’s got money from the lease, from the tonnage extracted and further tonnage fees for any rail cargo carrying ironstone over their land.
Easy money for doing nothing whatsoever whilst they and the other lessors turned a blind eye to the despoiling of large amounts of land with mining detritus, polluting water courses to this day, creating shanty towns reliant on one industry only and as ever, leaving the taxpayer to clean up after them when the bubble burst. Some might say karma was slightly restored when the Zetland’s had to retreat from their family home of Upleatham Hall when it began to collapse due to mining subsidence caused by their lessee.
Redcar’s self oiling machine
Through the wealth rolling in from their mineral rights alongside with the revenues from the vast Zetland land and property empire they suddenly became very large fish in a small but growing Teesside pond. Utilising the status of wealth and the Lordly cachet they subsequently infiltrated every significant level of power and influence in the North Riding-from the incestuous worlds of freemasonry, local government and property development to the judiciary and the armed forces.
Dundas/Zetland family members founded Marwood Lodge-the Freemasons haunt in Redcar, indeed ran the North Riding Freemasons and controlled North Riding Council planning decisions; Redcar Urban District Council Members and senior officers were widely rumoured Freemasons as were the local tradesmen who unsurprisingly got the contracts.
It was a perfect self-oiling machine, free from any oversight, serving ultimately the interests of the predominant landowner. From the 1920s onwards Redcar sprang new private housing suburbs to the east and south, mostly on tenanted productive farmland owned by the Zetland family, based on road designs kindly provided by the Borough Engineer, skilled no doubt in sewer design and load capacities but useless at creating anything else other than land hungry crude pastiches of the Garden City Movement. With some of the most unsafe road layouts ever signed off by an alleged Engineer. There was no real plan apart from money making for everybody involved.
Redcar’s collapse of the feudal order
It should be noted this was mainly viewed during the time as perfectly acceptable and the natural order of things-the great and good making the decisions guided by ‘enlightened self-interest’. Undoubtedly the family also served heroically as officers in imperialist and world wars; dedicated land for public use and tried to be good eggs when the dawning realisation of the final collapse of the feudal order became a reality following the landslide Labour election win in 1945.
Inheritance Tax and the threat of land nationalisation-finally watered down into the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act-put ‘enlightened self-interest’ and aristocratic vanity into the dustbin and the future use of land was to be democratically decided in the public interest in accordance with a democratically approved plan.
Suddenly the cigar smoked filled rooms of Gentleman’s Clubs and Freemason Lodges seemed as doomed as the once proud Upleatham Hall. Although the vestiges appear to have still remained as late as the 1960s when proud Freemason and convicted criminal property developer John Poulson bribed his way through parts of Teesside to result in some of the worst architecture and ‘planning’ the area has ever seen.
Warts and all
Most people cannot be unaware of the Zetland/Dundas name-it is commonplace but relatively few must know about their historic involvement in slavery and how the proceeds of that have been behind much of the development of Teesside and beyond. With current societal developments where does this leave us now with Dundas and Zetland street names rife, a massive car park welcoming you to Middlesbrough (no doubt an Equality of Opportunity employer), schools, buildings and parks in abundance? We cannot change nor should hide the past-it happened warts and all. But there is a balance to be obtained in extolling and promoting our idols who turn out have feet of clay and the legacy of people who had shackled feet.
The feudal kowtowing of the then Redcar Urban District Council and its residents to the Dundas family-’Lady Lily’, the last Dundas to live in Marske Hall, appears to have been regarded with some form of reverential awe akin to the late Queen or Diana Princess of Wales-has finally and thankfully abated. Perhaps now its local government successors could at least provide some sensitive balanced interpretation on remaining buildings, parks and streets associated with the family. And perhaps consider if schools and other public buildings in Teesside should continue to be named after slave owners and dubious property developers, no matter how remote from now.
For balance it should be noted the current Zetland family fully acknowledged their now distant historic involvement in slavery following the online publication of The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery’s findings and I am sure they are all perfectly respectable and nice people now.
The Zetland/Dundas family could probably claim great paternalistic contributions to the development of Redcar and Teesside-so long as the money was right. We should never forget some of the source of this largesse originated from the enslavement, exploitation and widespread abuse of fellow human beings for personal profit.
