Middleton-in-Teesdale: A Potted History (NY950253)

The capital of Upper Teesdale; the centre of the region’s lead-mining industry; Alfred Wainwright’s favourite haunt – all titles bestowed upon this picturesque little town set deep among the hills of the Tees valley.

Pre-1800, Middleton-in-Teesdale was a quite ordinary agricultural village – a market town, in fact – until, that is, the London (or Quaker) Lead Company decided to relocate its northern headquarters there from Blanchland in 1815.  Lead ruled thereafter, until 1905, during which time a multitude of new buildings were erected, tastefully, and of local millstone grit.  A ‘New Town’ grew to the south, administrative buildings to the north (including the impressive Middleton House) – solid, functional erections, now softened with the passage of time and faded memories.  For the nineteenth century days of lead were difficult times – only the most hard working and loyal workers aspired to the New Town. But the Quakers were caring bosses, it seems – a very early co-operative was built here; and by 1857 90% of the population was involved in the industry.  There were Methodist, Baptist and Anglican chapels (but, strangely, no Quaker Meeting Houses), schools, and arches – arches everywhere, in fact: a trait of the town.

Always a market town for sheep and cattle, it is now a designated Conservation Area. Gardens and trees abound: ash, sycamore, elm – even giant redwood and a monkey puzzle tree!  Good walking country – including the Pennine Way – lies close by; and the waterfalls of High Force and Cauldron Snout, together with reservoirs a plenty, all nestle nearby. And in the churchyard lies the church of St.Mary’s, built in 1878, and a curious detached belfry – its three bells once operated by one man using both hands and one foot – standing since 1557.   The present church is at least the third such edifice to be built on the site, with the original most probably being constructed in the twelfth century.

Middleton-in-Teesdale railway station, as was, stood at the very end of the Tees Valley Railway branch line.  The line operated from 1868 until it fell to the Beeching axe in 1964.

The activities of ancient man are evidenced by the presence of nearby Kirkcarrion tumulus, a pine-covered hill to the south of the village dating back to the Bronze Age.

Wynch Bridge, Teesdale (NY904279)

Near the sequence of waterfalls known as Low Force in Teesdale can be found the present-day incarnation of Wynch (or Winch) Bridge – a shaky-looking suspension affair over a particularly ravinous stretch of the River Tees.

The wobbly crossing of today is at least the third version of its kind to have occupied the site. When the first such contraption was thrown across the gorge it was said to have been England’s first chain suspension bridge – and the second in Europe. This was in 1741, and was built to facilitate the movement of the Holwick leadminers from south of the river (old Yorkshire) to their place of work at Little Eggleshope in County Durham on the north bank. Apparently, it only had one handrail and was suspended on hand-forged wrought iron chains – and at 70ft in length and 20ft above the raging torrent, it must have been something of a leap of faith for the individuals concerned. This first bridge was washed away in the Great Flood of 1771, but was replaced by an only slightly more robust-looking second bridge (this time with two handrails). You’ll not be surprised to learn that this one, too, fell apart in 1802, imperilling the lives of several poor souls who happened to be on board at the time. It was a miracle that only one of them was killed.

It was patched up and eventually rebuilt again (a little further upstream) in 1830 to pretty much its current design and appearance, with the double handrails and timber platform suspended from iron chains secured to the banks over cast iron columns. It was strengthened further in 1992 … but still wobbles a lot.

Note: The old image above greatly exaggerates the height of the bridge above the river.

Winston Bridge (NZ142162)

© Copyright Hugh Mortimer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Winston Bridge straddles the River Tees at a point which may once have been bridged by the Romans. There was certainly a medieval bridge dating from around 1424, though the current effort was thrown up in the 1760s.

It is a rather special structure in that at the time of its erection it was the largest single-span stone bridge in England – and most probably, in fact, the whole of Europe. It was the work of amateur architect, Sir Thomas Robinson, and measures some 112ft (34m). Impressively, it was one of a handful of bridges on the Tees to survive the Great Flood of 1771.

It is built from hard blue ragstone – which means that the material, astonishingly, came from Kent – though even this robust old structure has recently been strengthened by the addition of iron bolts (which can be clearly discerned in the picture above). It once played a crucial role in the transportation of coal from Durham to Yorkshire, but the rise of the railways soon put pay to that. Still, though, it rose to fame again as recently as 1988 when a Spitfire was flown through its airy expanse for the TV war drama A Piece of Cake – an impressive piece of footage which was then reused in the even more recent Foyle’s War.

Darlington’s Boulders (NZ290150, NZ288137 & NZ290146)

If, one day, you find yourself wandering around Darlington, then you may well notice rather a lot of large rocks lying here and there – items that have been named or labelled, and held in a sort of strange esteem. I know of three, and there may well be more.

© Copyright Chris Twigg and licensed 

for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The first one lies near the southern end of Northgate on the edge of the town centre. It can be found on the western side of the main road behind some iron railings and is known as the Bulmer Stone. It used to sit kerbside until, in 1923, it was deemed a traffic hazard and moved to its present location. The relic, a generous lump of Shap granite, was deposited hereabouts at the end of the last Ice Age, 10,000 years or so ago. It is named for the old town cryer, Willy Bulmer, who used to announce the London news from atop the rock during the early nineteenth century. It was once known as the Battling Stone, on account of local weavers who used to beat flax on it.

With kind permission of John Durkin - see here.

An even bigger chunk of Shap granite can found near the Victoria Embankment entrance to the town’s South Park. It was heaved from the River Tees at Winston and placed there in 1900 in remembrance of local geologist and naturalist Dr Richard Taylor Manson as a tribute to his literary and scientific work. It was he, apparently, who first documented the fine specimen – which is now, of course, known as the Manson Boulder. Its transportation took eight men four days to effect, with the help of a good deal of machinery. It was actually accidentally dropped on its way through the gates of the park, and was then just left where it fell!

© Copyright Hugh Mortimer and licensed 

for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Boulder No.3 – Stead’s Stone – is located outside Darlington Library in Crown Street. It sits opposite the offices of the Northern Echo and was used by the newspaper’s most famous ex-Editor, William Thomas Stead, to tether his dogs and pony. As you can read for yourself in the image above, he perished on board the Titanic in 1912 – more on this extraordinary man here.

Dinsdale Spa (NZ342121)

On the north bank of the River Tees a few hundred yards to the south-west of Middleton St.George is the spot of the original Dinsdale Spa – not the building/hotel of the name later built on the site, but the spa itself. It was originally discovered, well, let’s hear it directly from the best source I was able to find on the subject… 

The Sulphur Well was accidentally discovered in 1789 by labourers employed by the late Mr. Lambton in searching for coal. The men had bored to the depth of seventy-two feet, chiefly through red rock and whinstone, when the spring burst forth with a tremendous smoke and sulphureous stench. The remarkable qualities of the water attracted the attention of the labourers, who dug a hole in the channel of the spring for the purpose of bathing, and one of them, who had long been afflicted with chronic rheumatism, was perfectly cured by the bath and drinking the water. Though under no medical rule or regulation, the extraordinary effects of the water, particularly in chronic rheumatism and cutaneous disorders, added daily to its celebrity. A cold bath was built in 1797, and a warm bath has since been added. The Dinsdale Spa has gradually become a place of great resort, and the little village of Middleton, a quarter of a mile below the Bath, has been sometimes crowded with visitors. From experiments, a wine-quart of the water contains carbonate of lime 2 grains, sulphate of lime 25 grains, carbonic acid gas 2 cubic inches, azotic gas 1.50, sulphurated hydrogen gas, which contains 2½ grains of sulphur, 8.32. The large quantity of hepatic air is most remarkable, and probably exceeds the proportion in any medicated water of which the analysis is before the public. The separation of sulphur is so copious, that large quantities may be collected out of the channel of the spring. The water is clear and sparkling at the well-head, but gradually becomes opaque as the sulphur separates from the gas. Like most hepatic waters, it leaves a slight sweetness on the palate. The stream, which issues through a very small bore, flows twelve gallons in a minute; neither weather nor season make any observable alteration in quality or quantity. On applying the bulb of the thermometer to the stream as it breaks into day, the quicksilver stands at 52, eight degrees above the temperature of the neighbouring springs.

About two miles up the river are the remains of an old Bath; the water is slightly hepatic and saline.

[from: 'Parish of Dinsdale', The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham: volume 3: Stockton and Darlington wards (1823), pp. 230-242. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=76355 . Date accessed: 3^rd April 2012]

In time, Dinsdale Spa fell from favour. It’s potential, however, stretched deep into the 19^th century, with the construction of Dinsdale Station to accommodate the anticipated passenger traffic from the new-fangled railway system.

Nice images here and here.

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A Peaceful Dissolution (c.NZ323101)

Neasham Priory was founded in the early twelfth century for a community of Benedictine nuns. Today not a trace of it remains, having occupied a spot, it is assumed, somewhere under and around Neasham’s main thoroughfare on the north bank of the River Tees. It is remarkable, certainly, for one thing … and perhaps another.

The known ‘surprising fact’ is that it was the only religious house in County Durham which was independent of the Durham Cathedral Priory – an astonishing state of affairs considering the Prince Bishop’s lengthy legal – nay, regal – reach. However, despite many grants, donations and privileges being bestowed upon the institution, the nunnery was never especially wealthy.

Though the Dissolution came to Neasham Priory as it did to most other similar houses, the transition appears to have been a peaceful one. Thanks largely to the foresight of Prioress Jane Lawson, the building and grounds were able to be gently passed into the hands of her brother, James Lawson, a Newcastle merchant, in December 1540. Indeed, it is likely that Jane lived on as a tenant farmer in the nunnery buildings, which themselves seem to have remained intact and unplundered post-Dissolution, until her death in 1557.

Surprising, then, that not a single stone remains in situ today.

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Ghosts of Sockburn (NZ350070)

At the southern-most tip of the Diocese of Durham lies the parish of Sockburn. It’s a busy little place, history-wise, though you wouldn’t think it looking at it today, amounting, as it does, to little more a large farmer’s field situated in a giant loop of the River Tees.

There’s a nineteenth century mansion, a slightly earlier farmhouse and a ruined parish church – the much contracted population numbering little more than a few dozen (if that). There seems to have been something about the place, though, in times past which attracted the great and good to the spot. Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, was crowned there in around 780 – ditto Eanwald, Archbishop of York, in 796. What are described as ‘Viking Age sculptured stones’ lie (still, I think) among the ruins of All Saints church, which add to the mystery of the place – as does the legend of the Sockburn Worm (or Dragon), slain by the Conyers family who for centuries owned the manor. The creature is said to be buried hereabouts.

Due to its geographical situate, Sockburn was for centuries the spot where each new Bishop of Durham was ceremonially welcomed into the diocese by the Lord of the Manor – a practice recently revived, in fact.

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lewis Carroll all have connections with the place – which encounters seem to have found their way into some rather famous works. Coleridge’s Love was written at Sockburn after the married poet fell for local girl, Sara Hutchinson, whilst staying at her brother’s farm. And Carroll is supposed to have based Jabberwocky on the legend of the ‘worm’ – though the Lambton Worm also claims this distinction.

Get more of a feel for the place here.

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Newsham Deserted Village (NZ383110)

Meaning, ironically, ‘the new dwelling’, the deserted medieval village of Newsham sits on the northern bank of a wide curve of the River Tees, a few miles upstream from Yarm. Only a few house foundations and earthworks remain today – abandoned by 1600, the historians tell us, and ‘seldom occurring in the records’.

Surveys conducted on and around the site have been able to trace a central ‘hollow-way’, bounded by 8 plots, or tofts  –  as well as another eleven ‘house platforms’ thereabouts and a chapel site (St.James). Ridge and furrow can be discerned in fields around and about.

Newsham was (and, I suppose, still is) an ancient township of the parish of Eaglescliffe. Despite the early demise of the village itself, ‘Newsham’ lives on in the names Newsham House, Hall and Grange, but the original estate has now been thoroughly dismantled. It seems the farming folk round these parts regularly gathered to partake in various social get-togethers, despite the absence of a real ‘settlement’. Those days are, however, fast fading into history.

There’s not much to see at the site, but there is a nice picture of the grassy expanse in this document.

Ketton Ox: Animal & Pub, Pt 2 (NZ419129)

© Copyright Gordon Hatton and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative CommonsLicence.

The Ketton Ox public house, a fine-looking affair at No.100 High Street, Yarm, has a history stretching back, in various forms and under many names, some 400 years.  It must have enjoyed its fair share of custom during the town’s long reign as one of the region’s premier coaching stops – to say nothing of Yarm’s status as the Tees’ primary port before the rise of Stockton and Middlesbrough.

However, as elegant as it looks today, the establishment has dark associations with the once rampantly popular sport of cockfighting. Indeed the place was well-known for its gory gatherings when it was a legal pastime; but come a rather inconvenient change in the law in 1835, it had to move with the times… the landlord switching the venue to another room – conveniently fitted with a trapdoor to permit escape if the place was raided!

Being over four centuries old, the pub is, of course, haunted, with all manner of ghostly going-on, it would seem. Many put this down to the fact that the pub was once used as a morgue, primarily for bodies which, from time to time, found themselves floating lifeless in the River Tees.

Port of Yarm (NZ417131)

Though it may seem utterly unbelievable today, the town of Yarm, in the very depths of North-East England (and eighteen winding miles from the sea), was once the premier port of the River Tees. The industries of Middlesbrough, Stockton and Billingham – all downstream – now far outstrip Yarm in terms of river traffic, yet for centuries this was far from the case.

Until the building of the bridge at Stockton in 1771, the aging structure at Yarm was the nearest crossing point on the Tees to the sea. Furthermore, Yarm represents pretty much the tidal (and navigational) limit of the river, so the town understandably became an important spot for trade and commerce. However, it probably owes its ancient foundation to its easily defendable position in an inverted ‘U’ in the river’s course.

A royal charter granted in 1207 gave the Yarm its weekly market and two annual fairs; and the Black Friars settled in the town in the 13^th century, remaining until the 1580s.  The old stone bridge – still standing – was built in 1400, and the settlement grew and prospered until, essentially, merchant ships became too big to make it up river – with first Stockton, then Middlesbrough taking over the role as the River Tees’ main port. Yarm, however, remained prominent as a coaching stop – as is evidenced, at least historically, by its high number of inns and pubs.

Yarm looks anything but a port these days, yet is still as charming as ever.

Cargo Fleet (NZ517207)

The Teesside conurbation is famous for its extraordinary Victorian growth, but that is not to say there was nothing in the vicinity before the Industrial Revolution.  One of many modest settlements along the course of the old river in the days before the masses arrived was Cargo Fleet, a name which can still be found amidst Middlesbrough’s surburbia.

It sat (and indeed still does) on the outside bend of the River Tees little more than a mile to the east of the present-day Middlesbrough Railway Station.  Historical sources place its habitable history back at least as far at medieval times, when it was a little fishing village known as Kaldecotes (a name which is Anglo-Saxon for ‘the cold-shelter cottages’) located where the Marton and Ormesby Becks joined the Tees.

In time, its name became corrupted to ‘Cawker’, ‘Caudgatefleet’, and then ‘Cargo Fleet’ – or so the story goes.  Though it seems more likely that the ‘Cargo’ element came from settlement’s role as an off-loading point for large vessels during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, when cargo would be transferred to smaller boats for onward journey.  Additionally, two-thirds of Middlesbrough’s exports at one time passed through its busy little harbour.  Old maps show that it was at this time also know as Cleveland Port – indeed both names are shown on the 1856 OS map.  ‘Fleet’, in case you’re wondering, comes from the Anglo-Saxon fleot, meaning ‘stream’.

As industry saturated the area, Cargo Fleet lost its sense of isolation and identity.  As the years passed it came to be known, unofficially, as ‘Claggy Foot’, presumably on account of its muddy expanses. 

That last bit is just a guess.

The Genealogist - UK census, BMDs and more online

The Transporter Bridge (NZ500214)

The more modern a landmark the more likely it is to be disliked, it seems, by those who know it.  With the passage of time, and as feelings of familiarity grow, often such prejudices disappear as an ageing creation becomes assimilated into the local psyche.  It may even become a loved and protected treasure.  And so it is with the Transporter Bridge, Middlesbrough, as it moves beyond its centenary and begins to enjoy a new-found place in the hearts of Teessiders.

Built in 1911 to meet the growing demand for improved communications across the Tees, the famous old erection epitomises the town’s famed rapid Victorian growth – population of 131 in 1831 to in excess of 91,000 in 1901.  A ferry had previously laboured under the increasing strain and, though the idea of constructing a bridge was mooted as long ago as 1858, progress was slow.  Alderman McLauchlan advocated the idea strongly in 1901, and eventually the notion permeated Council circles until being properly adopted in 1906.  An Act of Parliament was thus obtained in 1907 and years of preparation followed culminating, in 1909, in the appointment of the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company of Darlington as designers/engineers, with Sir William Arrol & Co. of Glasgow named as contractors.

It was Alderman McLauchlan himself and the then mayor, Colonel Poole, who laid the two foundation stones on the south bank on 3^rd August 1910.  Little more than a year later the bridge was complete, and HRH Prince Arthur of Connaught performed the opening ceremony on 17^th October 1911 with a host of other dignitaries in attendance.

The ‘Tranny’, as it came to be known, is a curious affair.  One of only sixteen such bridges built worldwide (and most likely to be the last survivor), it works by the simple principle of rolling a suspended ‘car’ hung from overhead cables from one bank to the other.  The journey takes some 2½ minutes, and around 600 persons (or the equivalent weight in vehicles) may be carried at once.  The original toll of 1d per passenger and 6d per car remained in force until as recently as 1967 when, in fact, such items as carts, oxen, sheep, cows and goats were still listed among the tariff rates!

Not long after the threat of demolition was averted, Martin Phillips wrote in 1992 that the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge “is a focal point of local pride and a symbol of achievement and hope.  As I write during a recession it is difficult to see how anybody would wish to destroy such a symbol” – surely the height of praise for any landmark, anywhere in the world.

Facts & figures:  

Total cost: £84,000;

Total length: 850ft;

Span between towers: 570ft;

Highest part of bridge from high water mark: 225ft;

Concrete in foundations: 10,000 cubic ft;

Steel in bridge: 2,600 tons.

[this article was taken from Aspects of North-East History, Volume 1, by Michael Southwick –available from here in both hard copy format and as an e-book]