Weardale Cement Works (NY947385 & thereabouts)

© Copyright Helen Wilkinson and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Anyone familiar with the upper reaches of the Wear Valley during the late 20^th century will remember the blot on the landscape that was the Weardale Cement Works. As well as, of course, being the area’s chief employer for the best part of four decades, the factory’s lofty tower served as a useful landmark for disoriented ramblers.

The main ingredient of cement is ground limestone, and limestone quarrying has been a popular pastime in these parts since at least the 1840s. So when cement was ‘invented’ and its production encouraged in the early 20^th century, the existing activity in the Wear Valley made it a likely spot for the manufacture of the new-fangled construction material. It wasn’t until the 1960s, though, that the industry set up shop at the location in question, a little to the west of Eastgate.

The whole complex was spread over a large area. On the valley side to the south was the quarry itself; a little above this was sited the plant which crushed the stone; and a long conveyor belt took the spewed out material down and across the valley to the north bank where the rest of the cement production was, via a series of complex chemical processes, completed. The conveniently located Weardale Railway then took the finished product eastwards towards civilisation, though a good deal of it left the works in the familiar bright yellow livery of the Blue Circle lorries.  

The large chimney formed part of the latter works, being the smokestack of the kiln. Beginning life in 1965, the works themselves, though, enjoyed a relatively short-lived existence. The famous Blue Circle brand was taken over by French firm Lafarge in 2001, and operations ceased the following year when the company decided to concentrate its efforts on plants elsewhere in the country. By 2006 the whole plant had been demolished – and ramblers now wander lost among the fells with no guiding light to steer them home.

The photo above shows the demolition process taking place, with, it seems, the famous tower being the last element to fall.

The Extraordinary William Emerson (NZ308102)

One of the North-East’s greatest eccentrics, William Emerson, was born in Hurworth-on-Tees in 1701. He was also a brilliant mathematician, and can perhaps rightly be called a savant – a genius in his chosen field, yet a social misfit extraordinaire. His writings reached far and wide, including into the substantial mind and intellect of the great Thomas Jefferson.

He followed his schoolmaster father, Dudley, into the sphere of mathematics. As a young student, though, his offensive manner caused him to be sent to Newcastle and York during the course of his studies. In 1730 he returned to Hurworth to take over the running of his late father’s school, but his social shortcomings led to the institution’s closure in 1733. He resolved instead to live off his inherited estate near Eastgate, Weardale.

In 1735 he managed to get himself married to Elizabeth Johnson, the daughter of the Hurworth rector. However, his father-in-law, disapproving of his unkempt and uncouth new relative, refused to pay the £500 dowry, so Emerson piled all his wife’s clothes into a barrow and wheeled it round to the parsonage, saying he refused “to be beholden to such a fellow for a single rag”. In time, though, Emerson would make all those who thought him a wastrel eat their words.

Though he never really broke any new ground in his work, it was the interpretation and application of existing theories which would prove to be his greatest strength. His first work, The Doctrine of Fluxions [i.e. calculus], wasn’t published until he was into his 40s, but it became an instant bestseller. And, thereafter, as the man himself modestly pointed out, “I stepped forth, like a giant in all his might.”

And so he did. More than a dozen more critically acclaimed mathematical treatises followed on subjects such as trigonometry, astronomy, mechanics, navigation, algebra, optics, motion, music and more – all of them known for their error-free nature. The Principles of Mechanics (1754) really made his name, and was used by students into the Victorian era. Practical experimentation lay at the centre of his mathematical world, as he set his students to work splashing about in the Tees for his work on navigation, for example. He was, of course, consulted widely, yet when the Royal Society wished to make him a Fellow he refused, saying: “When a man becomes eminent, he has to pay quarterly for it. This is the way ingenuity is rewarded in England. Damn them and their FRS too.”

This outspokenness marked Emerson’s character all his life. He was often vulgar, ungrateful, bad-tempered, and had an infamously scruffy dress code. He would only tie the top and bottom buttons of his waistcoat, and wear his shirt back-to-front to keep himself warm. Then there were his bulging shin-covers, worn to stop his legs burning in front of the fire – to say nothing of his ill-fitting wigs! He walked everywhere, drank to excess and would stand fishing in the Tees for hours in the hope that the water would wash out his gout.

This mad genius died in 1782, aged 81, and was buried in Hurworth churchyard. And so finally, in the words of his epitaph, death, “as it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me.”