For this week’s Remember When, former dale resident David Ragsdale gives an insight into an era of Teesdale’s past that’s quickly disappearing from living memory
AT 85 years of age I am writing about living in Teesdale from August 1, 1939, to September 1, 1950, visiting my parents until 1964 when my father retired and they moved to Darlington and then to sheltered accommodation at Great Ayton.
My father had started as manager of High Force Quarries in the summer of 1937. New semi-detached houses were being built on the outskirts of the village on Alston Road and we moved into number six.
Numbers one to four were occupied by Jack and Marian Robinson, the proprietors of a fancy goods, sweets and tobacco shop in the village, Miss Hunt, headmistress of the local infant school, Vince Allinson and Walter Tallentire, the owners of Alston Road Garage.
Vince looked after the office telephone and accounts and Walter was the engineer. If I had a problem with my bicycle he would fix it – he was a lovely gentle man.
I remember looking over the school wall when those evacuated from Tyne and Wearside started arriving in 1940, with their names on a string around their necks and cardboard boxes containing their gas masks.
They were allocated to people in the village and surrounding area.
In 1940 bell-tents were erected in the field opposite the Assembly Hall which was owned by Sunderland local education authority to give under-privileged children five days in the country.
I realised later the men occupying the tents were survivors from Dunkirk, probably DLI and Northumberland Fusiliers. The camp opposite offered washing facilities and meals.
In due course on the same site of the Assembly Hall, Nissen huts were erected for the army and later housed POWs. They would invite us inside, give us sweets and talk to us in broken English.
One soldier made a sphinx out of clay and showed it to us – he was very proud of his handy work. Most of the POWs worked in local quarries owned by Ord and Maddison, the other side of the River Tees and my father’s firm, George Hodlinson and Co, whose head office was in Albert Road, Middlesbrough.
The quarry known as “High Force” a mile upstream from the famous waterfall – not the highest in the UK but the one that had the greatest volume of water, falling 60 feet and awesome to behold after heavy rain upstream.
The quarry was a mile off the B6278 to Alston on a private road, not the responsibility of Durham County Council, so my father had to use his own workforce to reach the site of the quarry and plant.
I can hear him now on the phone to his boss Tommy Robson at the headquarters, trying to convince him of the problems of getting to the plant which he never fully understood.
To those not familiar with Teesdale it has long, harsh winters and short, though pleasant, summers.
It is in a different league from the Yorkshire Dales of Swaledale, Wensleydale, Ilklley and Skipton.
I missed many days off school at Barnard Castle between September 1943 and July 1950 because the railway was blocked and the little LNER G5 0-4-4T could not get out.
I was a day scholar at Barnard Castle School, travelling on the 7.40am (it varied over the years), arriving to connect with the train to Darlington which had arrived from Penrith or Tebay, via the Stainmore line which rose to 1,470 feet above sea level. The huge cast iron sign proclaiming this is in the National Railway Museum at York, well worth a visit, not only for the railway enthusiasts.
It was a tragedy the line was closed, and books about the British Transport Commission and consultative committees have been written about the argument for and against which are outside the province of this note.
So, I attended Barnard Castle School from 1943 to 1950 and left to study violin at the Royal Academy of Music, London, for which Durham County Council awarded myself and another boy a scholarship.
I returned home for all the school holidays. Fast forward to 1952-54 when I served my National Service in the Royal Marines Band and changed direction.
Instead of returning to continue studying the violin, I attended Westminster College, then in London became a teacher, then a music adviser.
After marriage in 1960, my late wife and I took a cottage and made an annual pilgrimage to Middleton, explored old haunts, enjoyed High Force, Wynch Bridge, Cauldron Snout, The Bowes Museum, Beck Road and the Horseshoe Falls – in spite of the persistent flies.
Watching TV I always get a thrill when Teesdale is featured, recently the Silver Swan in the foyer of the museum. Happy memories which I shall always treasure.
J.D. Ragsdale,
Rotherham,
South Yorkshire
