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.

RAF Morpeth (NZ173821)

If you’re a car boot sale enthusiast you may well know about this little bit of wartime history. For three miles SW of Morpeth, near the village of Tranwell, lie the fading remains of a short-lived World War II airfield once known as RAF Morpeth – aka Tranwell Airfield.

It existed for a few short years in the 1940s, but has now lain fallow for more than sixty years. Constructed from 1941, it was opened the following year as ‘No.4 Air Gunnery School’, and was handed a collection of ungainly Blackburn Bothas for the purposes of training up student airmen – with around 4,000 young men passing through its gates during WWII.

The Botha was essentially a failed torpedo bomber, relegated to a training role early in the war. Other, more reliable, aircraft were to be found at Tranwell, but it was the Botha which was to be most infamously linked to the site – and which was to account for several fatalities during the base’s short life.

Essentially, the Bothas were heavy and underpowered – and the airstrips at Tranwell were only just long enough to take them. Several incidents in a few short months were punctuated by two especially notable accidents – the first occurred in November 1942 when two planes collided on the same runway, resulting in one death. Then in March 1943 two Bothas collided over the base, killing ten young airmen (average age 20) – five of whom were from The Netherlands. All are buried at St.Mary’s Church, Morpeth. With its appalling safety record the Bothas were eventually replaced by Avro Ansons in July 1943.

In time, demand for air gunners dimished and RAF Morpeth/Tranwell was closed in December 1944 – the substantial numbers of staff being reassigned elsewhere. A few months later the site reopened as No.80 Operational Training Unit, pairing Free French pilots with the famous Spitfire – though this only lasted three months before the base became a Maintenance Unit. Activity diminished thereafter before it was closed for good in 1948. Many of the overseas men who spent time at Tranwell – including a large Polish contingent – settled in the region after the war.

A few relics remain, including an underground control room, but the site is today a car boor sale haven. Proposals to reactivate the airfield and/or create a museum there in recent years have come to nought.