April 22, 2024 • 65 mins
In this enthralling episode of Archaeology News North East, join Jackie and Sarah as they exploratively take us through the coal mining history of the North East of England, in their segment, 'Tales from the Trowel, Hidden Histories'. Allow them to unearth the signs of railway lines that once whispered the bustling narratives of coal transportation, and guided us to lively coastal ports.
Witness the spectrum of lifestyles from erstwhile miners at New Brancepeth to affluent pit owners at Eshwood Hall, and understand how the coal mining sector molded the North East. Discover various free resources that delve deeper into the lives of Eshwood Hall’s domestic staff, the transformation of Great Lumley, and mysteries surrounding the survival of houses post-mining.
Join them on an investigative trail as they uncover the traces of industrial landscapes obscured under overgrown foliage at Bowden Close. Be amazed as they delve into Roman urban legends, hypothesize about a peculiar stone cave, and unravel the joys and challenges of historical exploration.
Tune in to this history-packed episode as Jackie and Sarah guide you on ways to rediscover your local history and more without paying huge subscription fees. Learn about how you can utilize digital archives to dig a little deeper into history. Discover how to best use resources from the National Library of Scotland, Google, DeCamillo, Free BMD, and so on.
If you're intrigued by history, locality, family links, or simply curious, this episode has much to offer. Rediscover landscapes, unearth the past, and unlock secrets through this thrilling journey across time.
Websites mentioned in this episode include
www.facebook.com/archaeologynewsnortheast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Now from Archaeology News North East, the latest archaeology news and interviews from around the UK.
This is Tales from the Trowel with Jackie and Sarah.
Music.
(00:28):
History of the North East of England is synonymous with coal,
so it seemed a good place to begin this episode of Tales from the Trowel, Hidden Histories.
In this episode, we look at the impact coal mining had on our county and how
it shaped the landscape.
The coal mining industry in County Durham is long gone, and along with it the
railway lines which once transported coal to awaiting ships at the coast of
(00:51):
Newcastle, Port Clarence and Teesside.
Using historic map data and a bit of Google, we've searched the landscape for
clues to long-gone wagonways and railways.
We looked at dwellings, including miners' houses and the terraced streets built
by pit owners at New Brunsworth.
Of course, we had to have a look at how the other half live.
We looked at some interesting places, one of which is Ashwood Hall,
(01:14):
built by a local pit owner in sumptuous surroundings.
But we also took this further by looking at free resources to learn more about
the domestic staff and gardeners of long-since-demolished Ashwood House.
So grab a cuppa and the obligatory biscuits and come along with us on the journey
into history right under our noses.
(01:35):
So welcome back to Tales for the Travel. Sarah.
I'm Jackie. And in this episode, we are currently sat in my car at the viewpoint
in Great Lomley to discuss how the village remains, but the industry that basically
created the village no longer stands. Yes.
Over to you, Jackie. So we're right on the edge of Great Lumley Village,
(01:58):
looking across to the cricket ground.
And in the background of that, we can also see the Angel of the North,
all modern things in the landscape.
But if we just look to our left, we've got the old Victorian school.
Tool obviously not there anymore but we
found it by using a resource that's provided
(02:21):
by the National Library of Scotland where you
can use it side by side with a google map
so you can look at the same image in
a map today's version sort of what
we would be looking at with our own eyes but then also
by adjusting the date ranges on
the opposite map where you can
(02:43):
take it back to it's at 1830 and have
a look at put the pinpoint on the same place and see
what was there back in 1830 yeah
and using this technique we managed to find a
primary school we think a primary school a village school definitely
more of the village i mean hawk is
(03:03):
staying on great lumley i'm from i'm great lumley so needless to say as soon
as i was made aware of this app i zoomed in to see what my house where my house
currently stands and it turns out obviously it was a mine but then I walked
around my village in the current day whilst contrasting it with an 1830s map and found things that.
(03:24):
Basically, the fields would have been full. We found a national school,
and the national schools were created by the church to educate the poor children
and the children of the working-class villages.
A school that we've managed to find a beautiful little footprint is still actually
visible in the field, which the farm was absolutely fantastic.
(03:44):
On the outskirts of the village, and also, which is now just beautiful farmer's
fields, also stood a village hospital.
A hospital which I had absolutely no idea had
ever been one in the village and apparently it was constructed
in the late 1600s which housed 11 widows
and a widower but I'm
(04:06):
assuming just kind of stayed for 200 years as the industry grew around it But
today we're sat here we're actually looking at the land where this hospital
was and the surrounding buildings and there's very little to indicate it was
ever here Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely nothing whatsoever. And with a lot of, I mean, we're all,
(04:27):
I'm sure a lot of people are aware of the de-villages that were kind of the
houses sprung up with the mining industries,
but then all of which then disappeared once the industry and the mines closed.
So too did the houses which the miners lived in. however
Lumley remained so that the houses are still here which
is still what we discussed as we walked around well we're not
(04:49):
entirely sure how the houses have stayed when the industry's
gone as to why more investment I mean the majority of the the village was built
in the 1960s and the 1970s so where that new investment came from and why we're
not sure so if you know please let me know so but so it's relatively new but
that there's no evidence of any industry whatsoever there's There's nothing.
(05:11):
There's a small plaque, a beautiful plaque that obviously...
Commemory, it's the mine and history of the village, but that's it.
There were nine pits named one to nine. There was also George Pit.
And Charles. Charles Pit. So this landscape would have looked dramatically different,
(05:34):
drastically different.
And the noise would have been absolutely out of this world.
But now it's just a bird tweeting quiet village on the outskirts of Strasbourg.
Isn't it? We walked this morning around where the wagonways were and where the pits were.
And there's absolutely nothing to tell you that they were ever there.
(05:56):
Just us using the resource of the National Library's mapping that we could sort
of plot where we were and know that actually we would have been getting sort
of ran over by each other.
At that point. So it was, I mean, we can't emphasise enough how fantastic the
(06:19):
resource is, especially if you are curious about where you live and you want
to know a little bit more about it.
We've totally enjoyed ourselves today, haven't we?
Sort of pinpointing ourselves using Google and then going back to this map and
knowing that we were, you know, where we were stood was once like the railway
line or it was miners cottages. Yeah.
(06:42):
So it's been really interesting, hasn't it? And we're hunted for some shops,
Lumley shops. We're a little confused by them.
I think more research for us will take place on that.
Yeah. So when we looked at the map, there's an area just outside of Lumley Village
itself called Lumley Shops.
And we thought, oh, well, what's Lumley Shops? Because there isn't anything there.
(07:03):
There's no houses. No houses there or anything like that. So we thought we'd
do a little bit of research, see what we could find out and have a little walk around.
We managed to pinpoint the area on the map, went back to the 30s,
1840s and then even skipped forward to the 1960s.
And there was still sort of evidence of the shops being there.
(07:27):
But when we got there, it is a ploughed farmer's field with no actual road leading to the shops.
So we found it quite confusing but something to look into in the future absolutely
so I think this is maybe where we're going to leave Lumley and move on to our
next location yes of Hidden Histories so where are we going Sarah?
(07:52):
We are going to go to Bowden Close is that correct? right shall we do that one then?
Yeah because that's the one where not even the
houses survived oh my goodness the
lack of industry so for all lonely is
a thriving little village now even after the
all of the the mines have gone there are quite a
few places within county during where even the houses didn't didn't survive
(08:13):
and the communities dispersed and
went elsewhere so shall we yeah yeah let's let's
go let's go that is where we were going we were
on our way to bowden close but the weather
had other ideas days it was far too windy it had
been raining far too much and it was like a
little bog and it was just not conducive for either of us to be carrying somebody
(08:37):
else's record equipment along there yeah i think our editor would have gone
absolutely berserk because if we'd have dropped it and if we dropped it so we're
going to have to come back into the our little studio where it's nice and warm and dry.
However, we did have a fantastic time with Aaron, Aaron Cowan,
who is a bit of a local historian.
(08:59):
Who contributes a great deal on social media to Crook and the surrounding areas,
was very knowledgeable of a little place that Jackie found called Bowden Close.
So I'd come across Bowden Close during lockdown when we were allowed to go for our hours exercise.
And I was looking on the map for somewhere to go for a walk.
(09:20):
And a friend of mine said, oh, well, I can show you where it is and we can have a walk around.
So we sort of had a few little wanders around and had a look but to be honest
with you when we went around there wasn't a great deal to see it was very overgrown
lots of plants and trees and lots of brambles trying to trip you on yeah which we'll come on to later.
(09:45):
But no i mean this time of year it wasn't too bad everything had died back a
little bit so we could We could see a little bit more on where we parked.
So keep me right, Jackie, because this is your neck of the woods.
So from Crook heading towards Willington, so kind of heading east towards Durham,
there's a place called Helmington Row.
Helmington Row, that's it. So we pulled up there with the rain sort of lashing
(10:09):
down at that rate. I met a stranger.
It was thankfully very nice. yeah would you do not do that like would you not,
I think I might end up quitting this all just meeting men off social media and
asking could you might take us for a walk through the woods and tell us what you know,
(10:34):
thinking I would instruct you would know better but he was an absolute gent
yes he was fabulous they met two very strange women wanted to yomp around Round in the month.
So don't you tell us a little bit what what was
or what is bargain close because now where we park
(10:55):
we park next to the primitive methodist church it's now private residence
but then we walked kind of up a nice big hill that
led to kind of skirted around a golf course we did and then there was a nice
fence which we went through obviously we were allowed to go through we didn't
just somebody's gone but we went through the fence and then obviously you're
(11:16):
even like a forested kind of nature reserve looking thing with lots of lumps and bumps.
Now, what did it used to be?
So it used to be a place called Bowden Claws, which was a community that sprung
up, sorry, a quarry and the cork ovens.
(11:40):
So when we looked at this map, it showed us a few little hints.
And there was also some stuff on social media that had shown some photos of
a street of terraces called California Terrace and another one called Sevastopol.
And also an old photo of a pub that was called, I think it was called the Belgian Close.
(12:02):
So when we went for a walk, we thought we'd have a look and see what was left
of all of this. Like I say, we parked the car up, walked through the woods and
tried to look at the map and look at what was there now.
With the help of Aaron, he was pointing out, you know, sort of like on the right,
this building here, this used to be a pub.
(12:24):
On the left were the terrace houses and showing us some old black and white photos.
And then we could see sort of...
Tiny little fragments in the landscape of where
railway lines had been so not necessarily
a railway line maybe more like a wagon way that would bring
carts of coal through down onto
(12:45):
the main line which was maybe it's about half a mile away because that was it
isn't it because we found that in Lumley as well that all of these mining villages
had little little railway tracks that kind of all led from the villages down onto a main rail line.
So these were all connected by vast tracks and rail networks, really, weren't they?
(13:07):
Yeah. And so these lines all connected up.
And we started following some of them. We were able to find just sort of like
depressions more than anything else, wasn't it, sort of in the landscape.
Until Aaron took us a little bit further down, just outside of where Bowden
Place was, to a railway tunnel.
(13:28):
That we didn't know was there and that had
been filled in so as you looked across the
farmer's fields you could sort of see a
depression but you wouldn't have known it was a railway
line that had been covered over and the tunnel then
filled in so that it was the height of the
tunnel the whole of the the field had been raised yeah so
(13:49):
you would just never you would have never known unless you know
you've got your own tool guide like Aaron yeah who
was very kind to show us these things since we did
that research is now being put on case to
the past yep and you can now go and
research that for yourself you know where it is have a look at it there's some
photos online so you can go and have a look at that for yourself we're going
(14:12):
back to bowden close it it was a thriving community with a huge amount of industry
railway tracks and crisscrossing the fields.
Cork ovens, a spring, a huge reservoir.
The reservoir, because that was the main bit that we could still see and walk across, wasn't it?
It was kind of the top of the dam, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah.
(14:36):
That bit that is accessible, which you can walk across and you can see where
the water would have laid.
But unfortunately, when we came to do our walk, we'd had some quite severe storms
and there was a lot of trees over.
So they were sort of laid across the top of the reservoir so you went to do
a little bit of climb and climb.
(14:59):
Scrambling a lot of scrambling because that again seems to be a theme as to
the where the obviously the mines have closed and the,
I'm assuming that the National Coal Board, who own the land,
they've filled in all of the shafts and they've kind of put trees,
planted the trees on the space.
But given what's underneath, it hasn't been cleared away properly.
(15:21):
Basically, there's not a great deal for the trees' roots to grab hold of.
But still a beautiful little place. And you wouldn't have thought that,
well, I mean, when did this disappear?
In the 1960s? out of the 60s was when it was kind of, it's still there in 1965.
Still there? Still in the 70s, yeah.
(15:44):
Actually, I think. What website are you on? What's it called?
So I'm on, it's, the address is www.dmm.org.uk and that,
you can search, and I've searched up Bowden Post Colliery here,
So it gives me the location, it gives me ordnance survey maps,
(16:05):
and it gives me shaft details.
So it says that it belonged to Joseph Pease and Co, it says, Pease and Partners.
So it was for coal caulking and manufacturing fire clay.
It was in production from 1854 until 1933, by the looks of this.
(16:27):
Yes, it says that the top of the main seum is abandoned.
This also gives you the years that it was run in and a little bit about people
who worked there as well,
giving you a memoriam so you can find out if you think that maybe one of your
family members worked at Bowden Cross or was connected to Bowden Cross.
(16:49):
It does have a memoriam there to tell you the names.
But that national website, is that right? So you can just get in there and find
all of the collieries. Yeah, this is the Durham Mining.
Is that a free resource? So you can just get in there and it's got all of the
history of the collieries within County Durham?
It has, yeah. It actually gives you all the collieries in the UK.
(17:12):
Yeah, it's UK-wide, not just for the North East, but it's got a lot of information.
You could find a lot of statistics, workers, the land, masters.
And then it's got a huge archive and gallery of pictures
so you could you probably even find pictures of whatever you
were looking for because i think that that's how we started on this one wasn't
(17:35):
it and it was you'd been for a walk through on cover and thought like i didn't
realize anything used to be here so then it's kind of stemmed from that as to
how to do research and how to
find that type of thing because a lot of people think oh well you need to.
You know, you've got to get into the archives or you need special permissions
or you're going to have to pay for these websites in order to do any sort of
(17:58):
significant research when that actually is not the case at all, is it?
No, no, there's a lot of free resources that you can use.
It's just like you say, it's like knowing where to go from and not be seduced by advertising.
Yeah, with paywalls that's going to cost you a fortune when really you just
want to be a little bit nosy sometimes about your local area,
your local history, your own history and your family history.
(18:20):
And you just want to kind of find out a little bit more about it,
but can end up being quite costly when it doesn't need to be.
Absolutely. The first resource we looked at was the National Library of Scotland,
which will give you the link to that.
From there, you go to their digital resources and map images.
Pages it gives you a lot of different
(18:40):
traces you can look at marker with
pin marker with outlines geo reference maps but
the one we do the fun one tell them
tell them we weren't really keen on those ones they seemed a little bit academic
for us and we thought we're boring we wanted the good stuff what's the good
stuff so the good stuff this is we were totally blown away by this and And how
(19:05):
we didn't know about it before now is a bit, I don't know, it's a mystery.
So I don't know if you want to tell people how to use this, Risa.
Right. Well, it's got side by side.
So what you have is you've got Google images of now, current maps,
and split screen you have a selection of old maps dating back to the 1830s,
(19:29):
I think is the earliest one. Is that right?
Yes, sir. So what you do is, what I did, and I'm sure what everybody does,
is you find your own house.
So you find your house and you drop a pin on your house and then it'll show
you exactly what was on that position in the 1830s.
And you can change it. You've got different, you've got ordnance survey maps,
you've got call maps, railway maps.
(19:49):
So there's loads of different maps going through time, but they do start from 1830s.
And, oh, it's tremendous. I mean, I've lost hours and hours walking around places
that I know were looking at things like, I didn't know what that was there.
Like, say, where I'm from, Lummi, there was a hospital. And...
I knew, I'd heard people speak of a hospital, other people who'd done the history
(20:10):
of the village, but I didn't know where it was.
And I couldn't figure out, you know, you're looking at something currently,
you think, I can't quite see it in my head.
But I knew exactly now where that hospital stood because I know what the current
landscape looks like and what was in its place.
So that's what we've been doing.
We've been walking around these maps saying, like, this is what it used to look like.
But then you start to find, as you zoom out a little bit, and you're like,
(20:32):
oh, wow, I didn't, there was all of this here.
And now it just fails and we're finding things that we didn't know was there
before but this is completely free
this is this is a free resource available to absolutely everybody and it is so
much fun even if you if you don't have to get out there and you're just a little
bit nosy like I wonder what this used to look like this is the website to get
(20:53):
on because this is tremendous I thoroughly I've lost hours absolutely hours
just walking around Google Maps
looking at what it used to look like I mean like for us say like somewhere like
Crook Marketplace you think well well, has it always been a marketplace?
Has it been something else beforehand?
So you can go on the modern map, click on Crook Marketplace or Sheldon Marketplace,
(21:14):
you know, drop your pin there and then start looking at the different maps,
the different date ranges on the maps, and you can go back and find out,
oh, it's always been a marketplace or, you know, it's the site of an old church
or it's the site of an old school or, you know, it was a derelict area.
(21:34):
Or maybe it was just always a field and that marketplace has sprung up in the
last 50 years or something.
But if you are curious about where you live and you want to find out,
this is the thing. This is definitely the thing.
I mean, one of the things that's got me excited, which maybe we'll mention it
in another time, but it was in Chesterley Street and I'm pretty sure it's Cessna
(21:56):
Primary School and kind of backs onto Parkview Comprehensive School on Church Chair.
In 1830s, 1840s exactly
where the primary school sits as in the playground it says it's a Roman fort
old Roman fort so obviously there's evidence underneath the primary school of
a Roman fort that was there and there was a national school's graveyard which
(22:16):
now just sits on a bit of land which it's just a hill that you can walk down
on your way to Chester Park and it says it used to be a national school's graveyard.
And it's stuff like that you know when things pop up and it's like Roman fort
and you put a primary school on it and then there was a graveyard yard down
the hill and they sat in the other and they said I had no idea anything like
that used to be there and that's definitely something I'll be spending some
(22:36):
time investigating now I've seen it.
So like this tool taking it back to the archaeology really is when it comes
to digging anywhere you have to know.
Do some research you have to find out as much as you can on paper before you
start digging any holes and one of the prerequisites has got to be a desk-based
(22:58):
assessment and this map forms,
part of that because then you can start building up a picture of an area by
looking at these maps looking at what was there before and then using maybe
something like keys to the past which will We'll give you the website address for that as well.
That also lists by date range, again, items that have been found.
(23:20):
So say if you were thinking, oh, is there anything medieval being found here?
It gives you a list of a medieval brooch or a medieval coin or something like
that. So you can start building up a picture.
So if you wanted to research, not necessarily did, but if you wanted to just
research where you live, you can then start using the map and keys to the past combined.
(23:43):
To start forming a bit of a history of
where you live by object but also by
the the maps and the roads the
streets the fields the wells mills collieries
all of that kind of stuff you'd start really putting the history back together
again yeah on paper where if you looked at that place today would be vastly
(24:07):
different because it's a puzzle isn't it it's it's the putting put the The mystery's back together.
Yeah. If you like a mystery, like me and Sarah do, we've spent many an hour
looking at this, trying to see what's gone before.
And for me, one of the things...
I was interested in was old manor houses, just because we were doing miners,
(24:33):
we were doing the poor end of society with the church schools and the terrace housing.
But we thought we might want to have a look at, you know, where the other half live and how they live.
And we came across a website called DeCamillo.
So DeCamillo is a database, which is a continuing project that lists every country
(24:53):
house built in Britain and Ireland that's standing or that's demolished.
So you might find on your map as you're looking, it might say Willington Hall.
And you might think, oh, that sounds like, like Willington Hall sounds like
it might be a manor house.
So you can then go onto the DeCamillo database, see if you can find Willington
(25:14):
Hall and see what it comes up with.
You know, see if there's more information that you can find on Willington Hall,
who built here, who lived there, when it was demolished, because you would probably
know if it would be knocked down or not.
But yeah, it's another one that if you are curious, you can start with the maps,
(25:35):
find the hole, go into De Camillo.
Or the other way around, you can go into De Camillo, you can go into De Camillo,
type in County Durham, and it will bring you the list of holes that are there or were there.
And then you can choose which one you want to research.
Go back to the National Library of Scotland's maps, pinpoint the map and then
try and find the hole and find out yourself any information you can about when
(26:00):
the hole was built and when it was demolished.
And then, of course, you can always use Google. I mean, that's another one.
Yeah. I mean, Google's everybody knows how to use Google.
But Google Scholar as well can bring up some, you can actually get the archaeological
journals and some of which are free about obviously digs and publications that
have taken place. and you just put it into Google Scholar.
(26:23):
Brings up a whole different data, but basically brings up the academic database
of information with journals and publications of PhDs, thesis and scientific
reports and what have you.
Everything else, all of that's on there, like overarching, just kind of like larger.
It depends on how deep you want to go with your research, isn't it?
I mean, if you're a history society or something like that, and you're wanting
(26:46):
to go a little bit further than, you know, than somebody just sat at home who's
just a little bit curious, then you can take it further.
You can look more into the academic papers that have been written about places
and historic events and facts.
But one of the things that you found, which I thought was quite interesting.
So we found a hole that we wanted to look at.
(27:09):
We then found who had built
it and why they'd built it which was the hall
at Redwood Colliery the Unthank Terrace
Unthank or the Ashwood Ashwood Ashwood Hall I don't know the name of the colliery
I mean Ashwood Hall because it was Ashwood Hall at the time wasn't it so there
was Ashwood Ashwood Hall so that was the from De Camillo from De Camillo because
(27:34):
that was the main owner wasn't it yeah,
So from Eshwood Hall, then I did just a very, very light search on Eshwood Hall,
which came up with a few different publications, a few different things that had been written.
But one of the things was it gave the names and ages of some of the people who
(27:57):
worked there, which got me thinking about ancestry.
And you came across something, a resource for the ancestry.
Yeah three bmd so three birth marriages
and deaths and it's a really really basic website but you
pop in it has a search function you pop in a surname so
you can start with yourself and work backwards and it
has little functions like ancestry find my
(28:19):
past it's that type of thing but obviously it's a much more basic
search engine and you put in the surname that
you want the date range that you're looking for and hit search
and it will basically list all of the people with that surname
in that time frame and you can kind of
find it's a good little resource if you're looking at your family tree
or like you can kind of put all of these things together currently so
(28:40):
you can have search in your family line via free
bmd or with ancestry find my past and all of the other websites that are available
basically find your ancestors on the likes of ancestry.co.uk or find my past
free bmd whatever and then once you've got like some census records once you've
found out where they were a hundred years ago,
(29:01):
then you can find it on a map and see actually what it looked like when they were around then.
So you can kind of, then you can build the picture of your own history and your
own past by looking, because that's what I've done, because I know that some
of mine, some of my ancestors were in Lamesley.
In 1870 and Liamsey obviously
doesn't look like what it does now so I'd look back went
(29:24):
through the map didn't I could actually see what it looked like when they were there and
and like living and working and everything so that was like really cool yeah
like to put all of the them resources together you can kind of really visualize
your own history your own past so not only the local history of your area but
your actual family history you can then visualize and see what what life was like for them,
(29:45):
for your ancestors and your great-grandparents and stuff, which for me is cool.
It's fun. It's really exciting to see sometimes you don't have that older generation
person to ask when you're not quite sure what the history is.
It possibly could be some story that's gone on in the family,
(30:07):
which there's maybe no actual substance.
It's just something just, oh, it's just something.
A bit of a, possibly a tall tale, possibly a little smidgen of truth in there.
But it's something that, oh,
you know, your great auntie did this or your great granddad was, you know.
Yeah, and you can kind of get the skeletons out the closet then,
(30:28):
can't you? And see if it's legit or if it's just kind of been made up along
the way. Yeah, this is it.
There's like a history, a family history where no one's quite sure.
But using these resources together. Yeah.
Like you say, you can start to build a little bit of a picture.
Start to get that picture. Yeah. It's a really good thing. It's fun.
(30:49):
We took a walk with Aaron and he was kind of giving us the history of the works,
the brickworks and the quarry.
I mean, we kind of moved away from the mine side of the site, hadn't we?
And there was a little stream that we kind of climbed over and we went and we
found, looking for evidence of the quarry that had stood there,
(31:11):
there's a little cave. Now, the cave seems to be some mystery.
What's it called? Calla Cave. Calla Cave, yeah. Calla Cave. Named after California
Terrace that was obviously there during the time of the mines.
Because it seems, because it had quite the small opening, there's pictures,
Jackie has pictures. pictures of them, my big rear end disappearing into the cave.
(31:33):
So it was down to me and Aaron to go inside, to go inside and have a look.
And it does seem as though a camera lady getting some really unflattering shots
of me trying to squeeze into this little hole.
But it does seem as though we've been kind of against the hillside
as if maybe there has been some slippage of the land and
(31:54):
it's fallen in front of it because the gap's really
small and you've got to kind of climb over and in and then it
opens up a little bit more once you get inside so it looks as though it's
maybe it's been a little bit bigger and it's shrunk over time with the
land moving but then once we got inside it just carved in
the stones just like a passageway that went a few meters in and then just stops
and that's it that's literally all it is it looks as though it was on its way
(32:18):
somewhere or maybe it's used for as a store for the quarry or i mean i have
absolutely no idea it is literally a small passageway and then we had to turn
around you You can't stand up.
I mean, I'm five foot eight and I couldn't stand up fully.
And so it's probably about five foot two in height in total.
But no, it was an interesting little place, but it was unflattering to get in
(32:39):
and out of because I'm sure I had to come out bum first as well, didn't I?
I can't remember how I actually got out because I remember having to get on
my hands and neck because I thought, right, oh, you know, this is good.
It's getting there, but it's wet and soggy and then we'll come out and then
I realise that actually I can't get out.
I'm going to have to get up and over to get back out the little hole.
It was a breach. It was. I'm sure
I was on my hands and knees at one point and then I'm sure I had to turn and
(33:01):
come out bum first to get out of the
cave which was beautiful I'm sure Jackie thoroughly enjoyed
that it was well it was amazing I'm just glad
it wasn't me I think no doubt me I would have got stuck or I would have fallen
yeah it was alright but the history we've got some we've got some pictures you've
got some good pictures there but the history that's a little bit it is more
(33:23):
urban legend than anybody actually known what it was for it was a part of the.
Mine it was a part of the quarry does it predate them both that there's not
a great deal of information on that itself, is there?
It's got almost like urban legend sort of sprung up around it.
And one of these urban legends was that it was connected to the Romans.
(33:46):
It was a cave built by the Romans.
But looking at the surrounding area, it just puzzled me as to why.
Because the Romans usually, they do something, they do it. They finish it.
You're expected to lead somewhere rather than just stop.
I mean, if you look at, I mean, we're jumping away, but Hadrian's Wall,
they put a mile castle on the edge of a cliff.
(34:06):
Why? And with the door that faced the cliff. Why? Because it had to match everything else.
The Romans followed through with what they're doing. So to have an unfinished
passageway just seemed a little bit odd for Roman time.
I think when we were there, it started to make a bit more sense in our heads
when we found a rock core in the river, which was a cylinder of solid rock.
(34:29):
And with the place being a quarry,
We kind of hypothesise that maybe the cave was used for storing dynamite.
Yeah. Which seems like a much more likely... Plausible scenario.
Yeah, because that was it, the kind of, they would bore the hole out, wouldn't they?
They would kind of pull a big cylinder out, drop the dynamite in and then blast the site open like that.
(34:55):
So it would absolutely make sense in a cool, dark place to store your dynamite.
Yeah. we're not nowhere near 100% sure
we would need somebody who's got
far more mining knowledge than us to take
a look and say does this look similar to any other sites in the UK that have
this type of little cave structure within it but if it's something that you're
(35:19):
interested in it's a rabbit hole to go down to go down literally to research this cave,
to find out about it to find out its uses and and
then have it documented because nobody does know
so if your research does you know
should like show up some actual evidence some
(35:40):
facts that you know that can be recorded then the
rest of the world don't get to know exactly what this place was
for yeah how it was used and you know why it's
why it is the way it is today yeah which then everyone can
benefit from when they come to do research well no
it was a it was a cool place because that was kind of to the top of
the imagine i would kind of came in from the crook side wasn't it and it kind
(36:05):
of led into a big circle around what would have been the cork works and then
down again past this little color cave and back towards where these terraced
houses used to be but then we walked kind of up
a nice big hill that led to we kind of skirted around a golf course we did and
then there was a nice fence which we.
(36:26):
Went through obviously we're allowed to go through we didn't
just jump under somebody's gone but we went through the fence and then
obviously you're you're in like a forested kind of
nature reserve looking thing with lots of lumps and bumps
now what what did
it used to be so it used to be a place
called bowden close which was a community that
(36:48):
sprung up sorry a quarry and
quarry i was trying to think what it's called and
a quarry and the cork ovens
so when we looked at this map it showed
us a few little hints and there was also some stuff on social media that had
shown some photos of street of terraces called california terrace and another
(37:09):
one called sevastopol and also an old photo of a pub that was called i think
it was called the about and close.
So when we went for a walk, we thought we'd have a look and see what was left of all of this.
Like I say, we parked the car up, walked through the woods and tried to look
(37:29):
at the map and look at what was there now.
With the help of Aaron, he was pointing out on the right, this building here, this used to be a pub.
On the left, with the terrace houses and showing us some old black and white photos.
And then we could see sort of, you.
Tiny little fragments in the landscape of where
(37:50):
railway lines had been so not necessarily a
railway line maybe more like a wagon way that would bring carts
of coal through down onto the main line which was maybe it's about half a mile
away because that was it isn't it because we found that in lungley as well that
all of these mining villages had little little railway tracks that kind of all
(38:13):
led from the villages down onto a main railway line.
So these were all connected by vast tracks and rail networks,
really, weren't they? Yeah.
So these lines all connected up.
We started following some of them. We were able to find just sort of like depressions
more than anything else, wasn't it, sort of in the landscape,
(38:33):
until Aaron took us a little bit further down, just outside of where Bowden
Post was, was to a railway tunnel that we didn't know was there and that had been filled in.
So as you looked across the farmer's fields, you could sort of see a depression,
but you wouldn't have known.
It was a railway line that had been covered over and the tunnel then filled
(38:56):
in so that it was the height of the tunnel. The whole of the field had been raised.
So you would have never known unless you've got your own tour guide like Aaron.
Who was very kind to show us these things.
Since we did that research, it's now being put on case to the past.
And you can now go and research that for yourself, you know,
(39:19):
where it is, have a look at it.
There's some photos online, so you can go and have a look at that for yourself.
But going back to Bowden Close, it was a thriving community with a huge amount
of industry, railway tracks crisscrossing the fields, builds,
cork ovens, a spring, a huge reservoir.
(39:40):
The reservoir, because that was the main bit that we could still see and walk across, wasn't it?
It was kind of the top of the dam, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah.
That bit that is accessible, which you can walk across and you can see where
the water would have flowed.
But unfortunately, when we came to do our walk, we'd had some quite severe storms
(40:01):
and there was a lot of trees over.
So they were sort of laid across the top of the reservoir so you had to do a
little bit of climb and climb basically,
scrambling a lot of scrambling because that again seems to be a theme as to
the where the obviously the mines have closed and the.
I'm assuming that the National Coal Board, who own the land,
(40:23):
they've filled in all of the shafts and they've kind of put trees,
planted the trees on the space.
But given what's underneath, it hasn't been cleared away properly.
Basically, there's not a great deal for the trees' roots to grab hold of.
But still a beautiful little place. And you wouldn't have thought that,
well, I mean, when did this disappear?
(40:44):
In the 1960s? other than the 60s was when it was kind of it's still there in 1965.
Still there still in the 70s yeah actually
I think what website's up here on
what's it called is that the so I'm on it's the
address is www.dmm.org.uk and
(41:08):
that you can search and I've searched a
bowden close colliery here so it gives me the location
it gives me ordnance survey maps and it
gives me shaft details so it says that it
belonged to joseph peas and court
says peas and partners so it was for coal coking and manufacturing fire clay
(41:30):
it was in production from 1854 until 1933 by the looks of this now it says that
the The top of the main seam is abandoned.
This also gives you the years that it was run in and a little bit about people
who worked there as well,
(41:50):
giving you a memoriam so you can find out if you think that maybe one of your
family members worked at Bowden Cross or was connected to Bowden Cross.
It does have a memoriam there to tell you the names.
But that's a national website, is that right?
It is, yeah. kind of you can just get in there and find all
(42:10):
of the collieries yeah this is the durham mining and it's
not a free it's not a free resource so you can just get in there and it's got
all of the history of the collieries within county durham it has yeah
it actually gives you all the collieries in the
uk it's yeah it's uk white not
just for the northeast but it's it's got
a lot a lot of information you could you could
(42:31):
find a lot of statistics word is
the land masters clusters and then
it's got a huge archive and gallery of pictures so
you could you probably even find pictures of whatever you
were looking for because i think that that's how we started on this one wasn't
it and it was you'd been for a walk during covid and thought like i didn't realize
anything used to be here so then it's kind of stemmed from that as to how to
(42:55):
do research and how to find that type of thing because a lot of people think oh well you need to.
You know, you've got to get into the archives or you need special permissions
or you're going to have to pay for these websites in order to do any sort of
significant research when that actually is not the case at all, is it?
No, no, there's a lot of free resources that you can use.
It's just like you say, it's like knowing where to go from and not be seduced by advertising.
(43:21):
Yeah, with paywalls that's going to cost you a fortune when really you just
want to be a little bit nosy sometimes about your local area,
your local history, your own history and your family history.
And you just want to kind of find out a little bit more about it,
but can end up being quite costly when it doesn't need to be.
Absolutely. The first resource we looked at was the National Library of Scotland,
which will give you the link to that.
(43:43):
From there, you go to their digital resources and map images.
It gives you a lot of different traces you
can look at marker with pin marker with
outlines geo reference maps but the
one we do the fun one tell them
tell them we weren't really keen on those ones they seemed a little bit academic
(44:05):
for us and we thought we're boring we wanted the good stuff what's the good
stuff so the good stuff this is we were totally blown away by this and And how
we didn't know about it before for now is a bit, I don't know, it's a mystery.
So I don't know if you want to tell people how to use this resource.
Right. Well, it's got side by side.
(44:28):
So what you have is you've got Google images of now, current maps,
and split screen you have a selection of old maps dating back to the 1830s,
I think is the earliest one, is that right?
I think so. So what you do is, what I did, and I'm sure what everybody does,
is you find your own house.
So you find your house and you drop a pin on your house and then it'll show
(44:50):
you exactly what was on that position in the 1830s.
And you can change it. You've got different, you've got ordnance survey maps,
you've got call maps, railway maps.
So there's loads of different maps going through time, but they do start from 1830s.
And, oh, it's tremendous. I mean, I've lost hours and hours walking around places
that I know were looking at things like, I didn't know what was there.
(45:12):
Like, say, where I'm from, Lummi, there was a hospital. And...
I knew, I'd heard people speak of a hospital, other people who'd done the history
of the village, but I didn't know where it was.
And I couldn't figure out, you know, you're looking at something currently,
you think, I can't quite see it in my head.
But I knew exactly now where that hospital stood because I know what the current
landscape looks like and what was in its place.
(45:33):
So that's what we've been doing.
We've been walking around these maps saying, like, this is what it used to look like.
But then you start to find, as you zoom out a little bit, and you're like,
oh, wow, I didn't, there was all of this here.
And now it just fails and we're finding things that we didn't know was there
before but this is completely free this is this is a free resource available
(45:54):
to absolutely everybody and it is so.
Much fun even if you if you don't have to get out there and you're just a little
bit nosy like I wonder what this used to look like this is the website to get
on because this is tremendous I thoroughly I've lost hours absolutely hours
just walking around Google Maps looking at what it used to look like I mean
like for us say like somewhere like Crook Marketplace you think well well,
(46:14):
has it always been a marketplace? Has it been something else? Has it been Bohan?
So you can go on the modern map, click on Crook Marketplace or Sheldon Marketplace,
you know, drop your pin there and then start looking at the different maps,
the different date ranges on the maps.
And you can go back and find out, oh, it's always been a marketplace.
(46:37):
Or, you know, it's the site of an old church or it's the site of an old school.
Or, you know, it was a derelict area. you know
or maybe it was just always a field and that marketplace has
sprung up in the last 50 years or something but
if you are curious about where you live and you want to find out this is this
is this is definitely thing i mean one of the things that's got me excited which
(46:59):
might be we'll mention it in another another time but it was in chester lee
street and i'm pretty sure it's sestry of primary school and kind of backs on
the parkview comprehensive school on church chair.
In 1830s 1840s exactly where the primary school sits as in the playground it
says it's a Roman fort old Roman fort so obviously there's evidence underneath
(47:20):
the primary school of a Roman fort that was there and there was a national school's graveyard.
Which now just sits on a bit of land which it's just a hill that you can walk
down on your way to Chester Park and it says it used to be a national school's graveyard,
and it's stuff like that you know when things pop up and it's like hello I made
a Roman fort and you put a primary school on it and then there was a graveyard
down the hill and they sat in the other and it's like I had no idea anything
(47:42):
like that used to be there and that's definitely something I'll be spending
some time investigating now I've seen it,
so like this tool sort of taking it back to the archaeology really is when it
comes to digging anywhere you have to know,
do some research you have to find out as much as you can on paper before you
(48:04):
start digging any holes and one of the prerequisites has got to be a desk-based
assessment and this map forms,
part of that because then you can start building up a picture of an area by
looking at these maps looking at what was there before and then using maybe
something like keys to the past we can We'll give you the website address for that as well.
(48:25):
That also lists by date range, again, items that have been found.
So say if you were thinking, oh, like, you know, is there anything medieval being found here?
It gives you a list of, you know, like a medieval brooch or a medieval coin or something like that.
So you can start building up a picture.
So if you wanted to research, not necessarily did, but if you wanted to just
(48:46):
research where you live, you can then start using the map and keys to the past combined.
To start forming a bit of a history of where you live by object,
but also by the maps and the roads, the streets, the fields, the wells,
mills, collieries, all of that kind of stuff.
(49:08):
You'd start really putting history back together again on paper,
where if you looked at that place today, it would be vastly different.
Because it's a puzzle, isn't it? It's putting the mysteries back together.
Yeah. And if you're like me, like me and Sarah do, we've spent like many an
(49:28):
hour looking at this, trying to see what's gone before.
And for me, one of the things that I was interested in was old manor houses,
just because we were doing miners, we were doing...
Poor end of society with with the church schools
and the terrace housing but we thought we might
(49:50):
want to have a look at you know like where the other half live
and how they live and we came across a website
called decamillo so decamillo is
a database which is a continuing project that lists
every country house built in britain and ireland that's standing
or that's demolished so you might
find on your map as you're looking it
(50:12):
might say willington hall and you
might think oh that sounds like like willington hall sounds like
it might be a manor house so you can then
go onto the decamillo database see if you can find willington hall and see what
it comes up with you know see if there's more information you can find on willington
hall who built here who lived when it was demolished because you would probably
(50:36):
know if it would be knocked down or not.
But yeah, it's another one that if you are curious, you can start with the maps,
find the hole, go into De Camillo.
Oh, the other way around. If you go into De Camillo, you can go into De Camillo,
type in County Durham and it will bring you the list of holes that are there or were there.
(50:56):
And then you can choose which one you want to research. go back
to the national library of scotland's maps pinpoint
the map and then try and find the hole and find out
yourself any information you can about when the
hole was built and when it was demolished and then of course you can always
use google i mean that's another one yeah i mean google's everybody everybody
(51:17):
knows how to use google but google scholar as well can bring up some you can
actually get the archaeological journals and some of which are free about about
obviously digs and publications that have taken place.
And you just put into Google, Google Scholar.
Brings up a whole different database, basically brings up the academic database
of information with journals and publications of PhDs, thesis and scientific
(51:41):
reports and what have you.
Everything else, all of that's on there, like overarching, just kind of like larger.
It depends on how deep you want to go with your research.
I mean, if you're a history society or something like that, and you're wanting
to go a little bit further than, you know, than somebody just sat at home who's
just a little bit curious, then you can take it further.
(52:03):
You can look more into the academic papers that are being written about places
and historic events and facts.
But one of the things that you found, which I thought was quite interesting.
So we found a hole that we wanted to look at.
We then found who had built
it and why they'd built it which was the hall
(52:24):
at Redwood Colliery the Unthank Terrace
Unthank or the Eshwood Eshwood Eshwood Hall I don't know the name of the colliery
I mean Eshwood Hall because it was Eshwood Hall at the time wasn't it so there
was Eshwood Eshwood Hall so that was the from De Camillo from De Camillo because
that was the main owner wasn't it yeah.
(52:48):
So from Ishwood Hall, then I did just a very, very light search on Ishwood Hall,
which came up with a few different publications, a few different things that had been written.
But one of the things was it gave the names and ages of some of the people who
worked there, which got me thinking about ancestry.
(53:09):
And you came across something, a resource for the ancestry.
Yeah three bmd so three birth marriages
and deaths and it's a really really basic website but you
pop in it has a search function you pop in a surname so
you can start with yourself and work backwards and it
has little functions like ancestry find my
past it's that type of thing but obviously it's a much more basic
(53:31):
search engine and you put in the surname that
you want the date range that you're looking for and hit search
and it will basically list all of the people with that
surname in that time frame and you can
kind of find it's a good little resource if you're looking
at your family tree or like you say you can kind of put all of these things
together so you can have search in your family line via free bmd or with ancestry
(53:54):
find my person all of the other websites like that that are available we started
off in lonely yeah to have a little look about then we're headed to bowden close
with aaron for a look at the corkworks quarry.
Terraced houses, which are no longer there. We went to Highjobs Hill to find
a coal shaft. Did you ask?
(54:15):
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We did. So this coal shaft was in a coal park.
And it's another one of these hidden histories.
So this, we found a write-up that was in one of the newspapers.
And it said that the guys who'd worked there had worked really well with very
little in the way of any accidents.
And they were taken to the Horseshoe pub by the owners of the pit for a subduous
(54:40):
meal and refreshments for being a good set of lights and working really hard,
which was another hidden history
thing that, you know, literally on our doorstep, you would never know.
You would walk past it a thousand times and never know it was there.
Because we parked in, it was like a golf club, wasn't it?
We were parked up and I'm looking towards the golf club and Aaron's like knopping the trees.
(55:05):
So again, me and Jackie just trustingly follow Aaron into a wooded area off the side of a car park.
But seeing that though, there was actually more evidence of structure there
than there was in the whole of the Bowden Cross area because there was this
brickwork there that looked as though it was from the...
I'm sure Aaron mentioned what...
(55:26):
So where we stood, we do have a little bit of videos. So I think we might put
that on our website, the podcast website rather, or the Facebook group so that people can see it.
And that was the brick lined entrance to the mine.
Obviously, you know, everything else is gone from there.
The pit headgear would have been above it with the wheel and it would have been
(55:49):
where the cage went down and lowered the miners down into the shaft so they
could then work the coal face.
But like I said nothing's there now just the hole the hole.
In the ground the reclined hole in the ground yeah but there was like some rubble
of like a building that was the first one and that was probably like a yeah
(56:10):
I don't know obviously it's one of those things where if you go onto,
the side by side map you could pinpoint,
that yeah the Jobs Hill coal mine
and have a look and maybe find out what that building
was could be an auxiliary building and the office could have been yeah could
have been like a changing rooms or something for the miners to get changed and
(56:34):
I mean that was if you didn't know that was there you would never no I mean
that's a pile of mossy stones wasn't it yeah,
but no that was that was well hidden well hidden and quite a shock to see this
huge hole in the ground full of cities in bikes and rubbish that had obviously
just been thrown down there yeah,
(56:54):
So we're really grateful to Aaron for showing us around. So thank you very much, Aaron.
And I think we may schedule another walk around with Aaron to go and have a
look at some outfits at some point. Yes, absolutely.
I mean, Aaron, he's quite a contributor on Crook Past, Present and Future and
a couple of other local sites, I believe.
(57:15):
Very knowledgeable and has a lot of photographs and a lot of...
Yeah, especially Bowsing Closet, a really good archive. of information yeah
so any more any questions on that anybody want to know any more about that Aaron
Cohen I'm sure you're not mind you had given him a message through Facebook yeah through them,
(57:36):
local history sites yeah so thank you Aaron for your time yes thank you very
much thank you very much to Aaron,
greater the gap the more years that go by the harder it is to kind of have any
sort of relatability to that time into why your village is important into why
your community is where it is. Do you know what I mean?
And it becomes ever more difficult, whereas these side-by-side maps,
(57:59):
to be able to see, look, this is why our community is here.
This is why our village was built, because of this mine, because of all of these
mines, because of this industry.
And this industry got the ships out around the world and we got trade,
and this is what made the Industrial Revolution happen, was what was going on
in these four villages in County Durham.
(58:19):
And it's trying to kind of you know sit with your kids and be like let's have
a route around on these maps let's have a little look and get them interested
and get them kind of excited to why their little village is what it is now and
why it's not as big as it used to be and why it's so bloody quiet.
Because it's like you know I always think of Beamish and everybody you know,
(58:40):
nice to go to Beamish but they have that they've got the pit in the miners cottages
but that smell you know the coal the smell and the noise and the blow and the.
Who did I don't know what's it called
the whistle is it just a whistle on the train no like
on the mine you know on the pole yes yeah I don't
(59:02):
know I haven't a clue but you know to imagine that
in your village or like all that going on it's tremendous
but it's sad it's sad that it is a case of you know
we know we're a mining community but we don't really
know do we it makes it relatable that
when you can see it if you're at sort
of a secretary school yeah age and and
(59:23):
you're doing sort of history yeah if you
can't see something it's very difficult to relate
to it and if you're having a class and it's talking about you know
that like how great the northeast was for for coal mining for shipbuilding and
things like that and you can't see the shipworks and you can't see the core
works it gets boring really quick yeah but history at school is boring jackie
(59:46):
and it is it's poor for if you can have a map and you can look and you but look,
two streets away from where I live was Opencast Mine and it was a sunken pit.
And you can walk there and look at it.
So this is where the people who worked here lived and this is where they worked.
(01:00:07):
This is where they went and did the shopping.
It all then becomes a little bit more closer to home. Yeah, and more relatable.
And one of the things that we managed to find when we were looking at the Ashwood Hall,
was a list a very such a
short list but a little list of some of the people who
worked at the hall one of the
(01:00:28):
things i found was quite was a bit it was ironic really
was that one of the gardeners that worked
there is recorded as living in lungley and we thought we thought it was quite
nice i mean you know it's it's obviously like for their family to yeah searching
for them but it It took us full circle because it took us kind of like around
(01:00:49):
the northeast a little bit and then back to Lumley, which is where this guy was from.
Yes. This was, you know, this was a guy who was a gardener, a young man who was a gardener there.
And he was born and raised in Lumley. And we thought that was great.
So we started in Lumley. We went across to Bowden. Yeah. We went to Jobs Hill.
Yeah. We then came to...
(01:01:11):
Down to New Brunsford. Down to New Brunsford. Yeah. And then brought ourselves
full circle back to Lumley. Back off to great Lumley.
A nice circle of coal mining and industry and society and community as well.
And all because we found two or three resources that were free. Free resources.
(01:01:33):
Exciting resources as well. I mean, like I say, the National Library of Scotland
side-by-side map is an absolute winner. and totally highly recommend to anybody
who is a little bit curious about anywhere.
That's definitely the first place to go to. And then Di Camillo.
Give a look for the houses and halls, if that's something that you're interested in.
(01:01:56):
If you want to, you know, if you
find somewhere on a map or you know there was a hall or there still is.
Yeah. And you want to know a little bit more about it. And there was the coal
mining, where you brought the list of coal. Oh, yes.
The National Mining Museum. Yes.
Yes. So their website is extremely brilliant. Very, very well populated with information.
(01:02:22):
Yeah. And we had the free birth, marriages and deaths for if you want to get
a little bit closer to home.
That's a free resource where you can start with your family history or kind
of if you come across an area that you think your relatives lived,
you know, back in the day, then you kind of start making searches through there.
Yeah. And that's nationwide, isn't it? it is yeah just you
(01:02:43):
know they see if you even yeah such a search you know
if you yeah like i say it's a basic interface you
just hit the search button and add pop the information that it
asks and say what you can what you can pull from there and
i mean obviously if you do have the the popular ones you've got ancestry which
will give more census information as well with through ancestry you can search
areas as well as people they do often have a free two weeks to use it so you
(01:03:11):
can If you're working quick, if you've got a fortnight off,
you can get your free and cancel it before it renews.
You can get two weeks free on that one.
I think if I'm in my past, I often do a free trial to get you up and running sometimes.
It's always good to have a little look first. But we're definitely not sponsored
by them. No, not sponsored by anybody.
(01:03:32):
If Manchester Street did want to sponsor our little podcast, just drop us a line.
I do use all of them I mean you can't knock the free ones off Oh absolutely
It's somewhere to start isn't it And sometimes you might just find everything
you need From the free stuff Because sometimes that's it You just don't know where to start,
(01:03:55):
It's getting started Sometimes you think Oh I want
to have a look Or I wonder what this was And it's just not knowing where it
starts I think if you've got a question And it starts off with I wonder then
these free resources can start pointing you in the right direction and I mean
as well anything to do with the history of Great Lumley the national schools,
(01:04:16):
which I haven't found a great deal of information on,
I know that there were schools that were set up by the church but that national
schools graveyard really got me curious anybody knows anything more about Great
Lumley or Ashford Hall and New Bransfith, Minantown and Bowden Course,
any new photographs or information,
would absolutely love to hear about that so that's
(01:04:37):
all until next month see you then we'll be back next time with more tales from
the trowel make sure you like follow and subscribe from wherever you get your
podcasts so you never miss an episode tales from the trowel an archaeology news
northeast production in association with bitmatic productions.
(01:04:57):
Music.
Now from Archaeology News North East, the latest archaeology news and interviews from around the UK.
This is Tales from the Trowel with Jackie and Sarah.
Music.
(00:28):
History of the North East of England is synonymous with coal,
so it seemed a good place to begin this episode of Tales from the Trowel, Hidden Histories.
In this episode, we look at the impact coal mining had on our county and how
it shaped the landscape.
The coal mining industry in County Durham is long gone, and along with it the
railway lines which once transported coal to awaiting ships at the coast of
(00:51):
Newcastle, Port Clarence and Teesside.
Using historic map data and a bit of Google, we've searched the landscape for
clues to long-gone wagonways and railways.
We looked at dwellings, including miners' houses and the terraced streets built
by pit owners at New Brunsworth.
Of course, we had to have a look at how the other half live.
We looked at some interesting places, one of which is Ashwood Hall,
(01:14):
built by a local pit owner in sumptuous surroundings.
But we also took this further by looking at free resources to learn more about
the domestic staff and gardeners of long-since-demolished Ashwood House.
So grab a cuppa and the obligatory biscuits and come along with us on the journey
into history right under our noses.
(01:35):
So welcome back to Tales for the Travel. Sarah.
I'm Jackie. And in this episode, we are currently sat in my car at the viewpoint
in Great Lomley to discuss how the village remains, but the industry that basically
created the village no longer stands. Yes.
Over to you, Jackie. So we're right on the edge of Great Lumley Village,
(01:58):
looking across to the cricket ground.
And in the background of that, we can also see the Angel of the North,
all modern things in the landscape.
But if we just look to our left, we've got the old Victorian school.
Tool obviously not there anymore but we
found it by using a resource that's provided
(02:21):
by the National Library of Scotland where you
can use it side by side with a google map
so you can look at the same image in
a map today's version sort of what
we would be looking at with our own eyes but then also
by adjusting the date ranges on
the opposite map where you can
(02:43):
take it back to it's at 1830 and have
a look at put the pinpoint on the same place and see
what was there back in 1830 yeah
and using this technique we managed to find a
primary school we think a primary school a village school definitely
more of the village i mean hawk is
(03:03):
staying on great lumley i'm from i'm great lumley so needless to say as soon
as i was made aware of this app i zoomed in to see what my house where my house
currently stands and it turns out obviously it was a mine but then I walked
around my village in the current day whilst contrasting it with an 1830s map and found things that.
(03:24):
Basically, the fields would have been full. We found a national school,
and the national schools were created by the church to educate the poor children
and the children of the working-class villages.
A school that we've managed to find a beautiful little footprint is still actually
visible in the field, which the farm was absolutely fantastic.
(03:44):
On the outskirts of the village, and also, which is now just beautiful farmer's
fields, also stood a village hospital.
A hospital which I had absolutely no idea had
ever been one in the village and apparently it was constructed
in the late 1600s which housed 11 widows
and a widower but I'm
(04:06):
assuming just kind of stayed for 200 years as the industry grew around it But
today we're sat here we're actually looking at the land where this hospital
was and the surrounding buildings and there's very little to indicate it was
ever here Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely nothing whatsoever. And with a lot of, I mean, we're all,
(04:27):
I'm sure a lot of people are aware of the de-villages that were kind of the
houses sprung up with the mining industries,
but then all of which then disappeared once the industry and the mines closed.
So too did the houses which the miners lived in. however
Lumley remained so that the houses are still here which
is still what we discussed as we walked around well we're not
(04:49):
entirely sure how the houses have stayed when the industry's
gone as to why more investment I mean the majority of the the village was built
in the 1960s and the 1970s so where that new investment came from and why we're
not sure so if you know please let me know so but so it's relatively new but
that there's no evidence of any industry whatsoever there's There's nothing.
(05:11):
There's a small plaque, a beautiful plaque that obviously...
Commemory, it's the mine and history of the village, but that's it.
There were nine pits named one to nine. There was also George Pit.
And Charles. Charles Pit. So this landscape would have looked dramatically different,
(05:34):
drastically different.
And the noise would have been absolutely out of this world.
But now it's just a bird tweeting quiet village on the outskirts of Strasbourg.
Isn't it? We walked this morning around where the wagonways were and where the pits were.
And there's absolutely nothing to tell you that they were ever there.
(05:56):
Just us using the resource of the National Library's mapping that we could sort
of plot where we were and know that actually we would have been getting sort
of ran over by each other.
At that point. So it was, I mean, we can't emphasise enough how fantastic the
(06:19):
resource is, especially if you are curious about where you live and you want
to know a little bit more about it.
We've totally enjoyed ourselves today, haven't we?
Sort of pinpointing ourselves using Google and then going back to this map and
knowing that we were, you know, where we were stood was once like the railway
line or it was miners cottages. Yeah.
(06:42):
So it's been really interesting, hasn't it? And we're hunted for some shops,
Lumley shops. We're a little confused by them.
I think more research for us will take place on that.
Yeah. So when we looked at the map, there's an area just outside of Lumley Village
itself called Lumley Shops.
And we thought, oh, well, what's Lumley Shops? Because there isn't anything there.
(07:03):
There's no houses. No houses there or anything like that. So we thought we'd
do a little bit of research, see what we could find out and have a little walk around.
We managed to pinpoint the area on the map, went back to the 30s,
1840s and then even skipped forward to the 1960s.
And there was still sort of evidence of the shops being there.
(07:27):
But when we got there, it is a ploughed farmer's field with no actual road leading to the shops.
So we found it quite confusing but something to look into in the future absolutely
so I think this is maybe where we're going to leave Lumley and move on to our
next location yes of Hidden Histories so where are we going Sarah?
(07:52):
We are going to go to Bowden Close is that correct? right shall we do that one then?
Yeah because that's the one where not even the
houses survived oh my goodness the
lack of industry so for all lonely is
a thriving little village now even after the
all of the the mines have gone there are quite a
few places within county during where even the houses didn't didn't survive
(08:13):
and the communities dispersed and
went elsewhere so shall we yeah yeah let's let's
go let's go that is where we were going we were
on our way to bowden close but the weather
had other ideas days it was far too windy it had
been raining far too much and it was like a
little bog and it was just not conducive for either of us to be carrying somebody
(08:37):
else's record equipment along there yeah i think our editor would have gone
absolutely berserk because if we'd have dropped it and if we dropped it so we're
going to have to come back into the our little studio where it's nice and warm and dry.
However, we did have a fantastic time with Aaron, Aaron Cowan,
who is a bit of a local historian.
(08:59):
Who contributes a great deal on social media to Crook and the surrounding areas,
was very knowledgeable of a little place that Jackie found called Bowden Close.
So I'd come across Bowden Close during lockdown when we were allowed to go for our hours exercise.
And I was looking on the map for somewhere to go for a walk.
(09:20):
And a friend of mine said, oh, well, I can show you where it is and we can have a walk around.
So we sort of had a few little wanders around and had a look but to be honest
with you when we went around there wasn't a great deal to see it was very overgrown
lots of plants and trees and lots of brambles trying to trip you on yeah which we'll come on to later.
(09:45):
But no i mean this time of year it wasn't too bad everything had died back a
little bit so we could We could see a little bit more on where we parked.
So keep me right, Jackie, because this is your neck of the woods.
So from Crook heading towards Willington, so kind of heading east towards Durham,
there's a place called Helmington Row.
Helmington Row, that's it. So we pulled up there with the rain sort of lashing
(10:09):
down at that rate. I met a stranger.
It was thankfully very nice. yeah would you do not do that like would you not,
I think I might end up quitting this all just meeting men off social media and
asking could you might take us for a walk through the woods and tell us what you know,
(10:34):
thinking I would instruct you would know better but he was an absolute gent
yes he was fabulous they met two very strange women wanted to yomp around Round in the month.
So don't you tell us a little bit what what was
or what is bargain close because now where we park
(10:55):
we park next to the primitive methodist church it's now private residence
but then we walked kind of up a nice big hill that
led to kind of skirted around a golf course we did and then there was a nice
fence which we went through obviously we were allowed to go through we didn't
just somebody's gone but we went through the fence and then obviously you're
(11:16):
even like a forested kind of nature reserve looking thing with lots of lumps and bumps.
Now, what did it used to be?
So it used to be a place called Bowden Claws, which was a community that sprung
up, sorry, a quarry and the cork ovens.
(11:40):
So when we looked at this map, it showed us a few little hints.
And there was also some stuff on social media that had shown some photos of
a street of terraces called California Terrace and another one called Sevastopol.
And also an old photo of a pub that was called, I think it was called the Belgian Close.
(12:02):
So when we went for a walk, we thought we'd have a look and see what was left
of all of this. Like I say, we parked the car up, walked through the woods and
tried to look at the map and look at what was there now.
With the help of Aaron, he was pointing out, you know, sort of like on the right,
this building here, this used to be a pub.
(12:24):
On the left were the terrace houses and showing us some old black and white photos.
And then we could see sort of...
Tiny little fragments in the landscape of where
railway lines had been so not necessarily
a railway line maybe more like a wagon way that would bring
carts of coal through down onto
(12:45):
the main line which was maybe it's about half a mile away because that was it
isn't it because we found that in Lumley as well that all of these mining villages
had little little railway tracks that kind of all led from the villages down onto a main rail line.
So these were all connected by vast tracks and rail networks, really, weren't they?
(13:07):
Yeah. And so these lines all connected up.
And we started following some of them. We were able to find just sort of like
depressions more than anything else, wasn't it, sort of in the landscape.
Until Aaron took us a little bit further down, just outside of where Bowden
Place was, to a railway tunnel.
(13:28):
That we didn't know was there and that had
been filled in so as you looked across the
farmer's fields you could sort of see a
depression but you wouldn't have known it was a railway
line that had been covered over and the tunnel then
filled in so that it was the height of the
tunnel the whole of the the field had been raised yeah so
(13:49):
you would just never you would have never known unless you know
you've got your own tool guide like Aaron yeah who
was very kind to show us these things since we did
that research is now being put on case to
the past yep and you can now go and
research that for yourself you know where it is have a look at it there's some
photos online so you can go and have a look at that for yourself we're going
(14:12):
back to bowden close it it was a thriving community with a huge amount of industry
railway tracks and crisscrossing the fields.
Cork ovens, a spring, a huge reservoir.
The reservoir, because that was the main bit that we could still see and walk across, wasn't it?
It was kind of the top of the dam, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah.
(14:36):
That bit that is accessible, which you can walk across and you can see where
the water would have laid.
But unfortunately, when we came to do our walk, we'd had some quite severe storms
and there was a lot of trees over.
So they were sort of laid across the top of the reservoir so you went to do
a little bit of climb and climb.
(14:59):
Scrambling a lot of scrambling because that again seems to be a theme as to
the where the obviously the mines have closed and the,
I'm assuming that the National Coal Board, who own the land,
they've filled in all of the shafts and they've kind of put trees,
planted the trees on the space.
But given what's underneath, it hasn't been cleared away properly.
(15:21):
Basically, there's not a great deal for the trees' roots to grab hold of.
But still a beautiful little place. And you wouldn't have thought that,
well, I mean, when did this disappear?
In the 1960s? out of the 60s was when it was kind of, it's still there in 1965.
Still there? Still in the 70s, yeah.
(15:44):
Actually, I think. What website are you on? What's it called?
So I'm on, it's, the address is www.dmm.org.uk and that,
you can search, and I've searched up Bowden Post Colliery here,
So it gives me the location, it gives me ordnance survey maps,
(16:05):
and it gives me shaft details.
So it says that it belonged to Joseph Pease and Co, it says, Pease and Partners.
So it was for coal caulking and manufacturing fire clay.
It was in production from 1854 until 1933, by the looks of this.
(16:27):
Yes, it says that the top of the main seum is abandoned.
This also gives you the years that it was run in and a little bit about people
who worked there as well,
giving you a memoriam so you can find out if you think that maybe one of your
family members worked at Bowden Cross or was connected to Bowden Cross.
(16:49):
It does have a memoriam there to tell you the names.
But that national website, is that right? So you can just get in there and find
all of the collieries. Yeah, this is the Durham Mining.
Is that a free resource? So you can just get in there and it's got all of the
history of the collieries within County Durham?
It has, yeah. It actually gives you all the collieries in the UK.
(17:12):
Yeah, it's UK-wide, not just for the North East, but it's got a lot of information.
You could find a lot of statistics, workers, the land, masters.
And then it's got a huge archive and gallery of pictures
so you could you probably even find pictures of whatever you
were looking for because i think that that's how we started on this one wasn't
(17:35):
it and it was you'd been for a walk through on cover and thought like i didn't
realize anything used to be here so then it's kind of stemmed from that as to
how to do research and how to
find that type of thing because a lot of people think oh well you need to.
You know, you've got to get into the archives or you need special permissions
or you're going to have to pay for these websites in order to do any sort of
(17:58):
significant research when that actually is not the case at all, is it?
No, no, there's a lot of free resources that you can use.
It's just like you say, it's like knowing where to go from and not be seduced by advertising.
Yeah, with paywalls that's going to cost you a fortune when really you just
want to be a little bit nosy sometimes about your local area,
your local history, your own history and your family history.
(18:20):
And you just want to kind of find out a little bit more about it,
but can end up being quite costly when it doesn't need to be.
Absolutely. The first resource we looked at was the National Library of Scotland,
which will give you the link to that.
From there, you go to their digital resources and map images.
Pages it gives you a lot of different
(18:40):
traces you can look at marker with
pin marker with outlines geo reference maps but
the one we do the fun one tell them
tell them we weren't really keen on those ones they seemed a little bit academic
for us and we thought we're boring we wanted the good stuff what's the good
stuff so the good stuff this is we were totally blown away by this and And how
(19:05):
we didn't know about it before now is a bit, I don't know, it's a mystery.
So I don't know if you want to tell people how to use this, Risa.
Right. Well, it's got side by side.
So what you have is you've got Google images of now, current maps,
and split screen you have a selection of old maps dating back to the 1830s,
(19:29):
I think is the earliest one. Is that right?
Yes, sir. So what you do is, what I did, and I'm sure what everybody does,
is you find your own house.
So you find your house and you drop a pin on your house and then it'll show
you exactly what was on that position in the 1830s.
And you can change it. You've got different, you've got ordnance survey maps,
you've got call maps, railway maps.
(19:49):
So there's loads of different maps going through time, but they do start from 1830s.
And, oh, it's tremendous. I mean, I've lost hours and hours walking around places
that I know were looking at things like, I didn't know what that was there.
Like, say, where I'm from, Lummi, there was a hospital. And...
I knew, I'd heard people speak of a hospital, other people who'd done the history
(20:10):
of the village, but I didn't know where it was.
And I couldn't figure out, you know, you're looking at something currently,
you think, I can't quite see it in my head.
But I knew exactly now where that hospital stood because I know what the current
landscape looks like and what was in its place.
So that's what we've been doing.
We've been walking around these maps saying, like, this is what it used to look like.
But then you start to find, as you zoom out a little bit, and you're like,
(20:32):
oh, wow, I didn't, there was all of this here.
And now it just fails and we're finding things that we didn't know was there
before but this is completely free
this is this is a free resource available to absolutely everybody and it is so
much fun even if you if you don't have to get out there and you're just a little
bit nosy like I wonder what this used to look like this is the website to get
(20:53):
on because this is tremendous I thoroughly I've lost hours absolutely hours
just walking around Google Maps
looking at what it used to look like I mean like for us say like somewhere like
Crook Marketplace you think well well, has it always been a marketplace?
Has it been something else beforehand?
So you can go on the modern map, click on Crook Marketplace or Sheldon Marketplace,
(21:14):
you know, drop your pin there and then start looking at the different maps,
the different date ranges on the maps, and you can go back and find out,
oh, it's always been a marketplace or, you know, it's the site of an old church
or it's the site of an old school or, you know, it was a derelict area.
(21:34):
Or maybe it was just always a field and that marketplace has sprung up in the
last 50 years or something.
But if you are curious about where you live and you want to find out,
this is the thing. This is definitely the thing.
I mean, one of the things that's got me excited, which maybe we'll mention it
in another time, but it was in Chesterley Street and I'm pretty sure it's Cessna
(21:56):
Primary School and kind of backs onto Parkview Comprehensive School on Church Chair.
In 1830s, 1840s exactly
where the primary school sits as in the playground it says it's a Roman fort
old Roman fort so obviously there's evidence underneath the primary school of
a Roman fort that was there and there was a national school's graveyard which
(22:16):
now just sits on a bit of land which it's just a hill that you can walk down
on your way to Chester Park and it says it used to be a national school's graveyard.
And it's stuff like that you know when things pop up and it's like Roman fort
and you put a primary school on it and then there was a graveyard yard down
the hill and they sat in the other and they said I had no idea anything like
that used to be there and that's definitely something I'll be spending some
(22:36):
time investigating now I've seen it.
So like this tool taking it back to the archaeology really is when it comes
to digging anywhere you have to know.
Do some research you have to find out as much as you can on paper before you
start digging any holes and one of the prerequisites has got to be a desk-based
(22:58):
assessment and this map forms,
part of that because then you can start building up a picture of an area by
looking at these maps looking at what was there before and then using maybe
something like keys to the past which will We'll give you the website address for that as well.
That also lists by date range, again, items that have been found.
(23:20):
So say if you were thinking, oh, is there anything medieval being found here?
It gives you a list of a medieval brooch or a medieval coin or something like
that. So you can start building up a picture.
So if you wanted to research, not necessarily did, but if you wanted to just
research where you live, you can then start using the map and keys to the past combined.
(23:43):
To start forming a bit of a history of
where you live by object but also by
the the maps and the roads the
streets the fields the wells mills collieries
all of that kind of stuff you'd start really putting the history back together
again yeah on paper where if you looked at that place today would be vastly
(24:07):
different because it's a puzzle isn't it it's it's the putting put the The mystery's back together.
Yeah. If you like a mystery, like me and Sarah do, we've spent many an hour
looking at this, trying to see what's gone before.
And for me, one of the things...
I was interested in was old manor houses, just because we were doing miners,
(24:33):
we were doing the poor end of society with the church schools and the terrace housing.
But we thought we might want to have a look at, you know, where the other half live and how they live.
And we came across a website called DeCamillo.
So DeCamillo is a database, which is a continuing project that lists every country
(24:53):
house built in Britain and Ireland that's standing or that's demolished.
So you might find on your map as you're looking, it might say Willington Hall.
And you might think, oh, that sounds like, like Willington Hall sounds like
it might be a manor house.
So you can then go onto the DeCamillo database, see if you can find Willington
(25:14):
Hall and see what it comes up with.
You know, see if there's more information that you can find on Willington Hall,
who built here, who lived there, when it was demolished, because you would probably
know if it would be knocked down or not.
But yeah, it's another one that if you are curious, you can start with the maps,
(25:35):
find the hole, go into De Camillo.
Or the other way around, you can go into De Camillo, you can go into De Camillo,
type in County Durham, and it will bring you the list of holes that are there or were there.
And then you can choose which one you want to research.
Go back to the National Library of Scotland's maps, pinpoint the map and then
try and find the hole and find out yourself any information you can about when
(26:00):
the hole was built and when it was demolished.
And then, of course, you can always use Google. I mean, that's another one.
Yeah. I mean, Google's everybody knows how to use Google.
But Google Scholar as well can bring up some, you can actually get the archaeological
journals and some of which are free about obviously digs and publications that
have taken place. and you just put it into Google Scholar.
(26:23):
Brings up a whole different data, but basically brings up the academic database
of information with journals and publications of PhDs, thesis and scientific
reports and what have you.
Everything else, all of that's on there, like overarching, just kind of like larger.
It depends on how deep you want to go with your research, isn't it?
I mean, if you're a history society or something like that, and you're wanting
(26:46):
to go a little bit further than, you know, than somebody just sat at home who's
just a little bit curious, then you can take it further.
You can look more into the academic papers that have been written about places
and historic events and facts.
But one of the things that you found, which I thought was quite interesting.
So we found a hole that we wanted to look at.
(27:09):
We then found who had built
it and why they'd built it which was the hall
at Redwood Colliery the Unthank Terrace
Unthank or the Ashwood Ashwood Ashwood Hall I don't know the name of the colliery
I mean Ashwood Hall because it was Ashwood Hall at the time wasn't it so there
was Ashwood Ashwood Hall so that was the from De Camillo from De Camillo because
(27:34):
that was the main owner wasn't it yeah,
So from Eshwood Hall, then I did just a very, very light search on Eshwood Hall,
which came up with a few different publications, a few different things that had been written.
But one of the things was it gave the names and ages of some of the people who
(27:57):
worked there, which got me thinking about ancestry.
And you came across something, a resource for the ancestry.
Yeah three bmd so three birth marriages
and deaths and it's a really really basic website but you
pop in it has a search function you pop in a surname so
you can start with yourself and work backwards and it
has little functions like ancestry find my
(28:19):
past it's that type of thing but obviously it's a much more basic
search engine and you put in the surname that
you want the date range that you're looking for and hit search
and it will basically list all of the people with that surname
in that time frame and you can kind of
find it's a good little resource if you're looking at your family tree
or like you can kind of put all of these things together currently so
(28:40):
you can have search in your family line via free
bmd or with ancestry find my past and all of the other websites that are available
basically find your ancestors on the likes of ancestry.co.uk or find my past
free bmd whatever and then once you've got like some census records once you've
found out where they were a hundred years ago,
(29:01):
then you can find it on a map and see actually what it looked like when they were around then.
So you can kind of, then you can build the picture of your own history and your
own past by looking, because that's what I've done, because I know that some
of mine, some of my ancestors were in Lamesley.
In 1870 and Liamsey obviously
doesn't look like what it does now so I'd look back went
(29:24):
through the map didn't I could actually see what it looked like when they were there and
and like living and working and everything so that was like really cool yeah
like to put all of the them resources together you can kind of really visualize
your own history your own past so not only the local history of your area but
your actual family history you can then visualize and see what what life was like for them,
(29:45):
for your ancestors and your great-grandparents and stuff, which for me is cool.
It's fun. It's really exciting to see sometimes you don't have that older generation
person to ask when you're not quite sure what the history is.
It possibly could be some story that's gone on in the family,
(30:07):
which there's maybe no actual substance.
It's just something just, oh, it's just something.
A bit of a, possibly a tall tale, possibly a little smidgen of truth in there.
But it's something that, oh,
you know, your great auntie did this or your great granddad was, you know.
Yeah, and you can kind of get the skeletons out the closet then,
(30:28):
can't you? And see if it's legit or if it's just kind of been made up along
the way. Yeah, this is it.
There's like a history, a family history where no one's quite sure.
But using these resources together. Yeah.
Like you say, you can start to build a little bit of a picture.
Start to get that picture. Yeah. It's a really good thing. It's fun.
(30:49):
We took a walk with Aaron and he was kind of giving us the history of the works,
the brickworks and the quarry.
I mean, we kind of moved away from the mine side of the site, hadn't we?
And there was a little stream that we kind of climbed over and we went and we
found, looking for evidence of the quarry that had stood there,
(31:11):
there's a little cave. Now, the cave seems to be some mystery.
What's it called? Calla Cave. Calla Cave, yeah. Calla Cave. Named after California
Terrace that was obviously there during the time of the mines.
Because it seems, because it had quite the small opening, there's pictures,
Jackie has pictures. pictures of them, my big rear end disappearing into the cave.
(31:33):
So it was down to me and Aaron to go inside, to go inside and have a look.
And it does seem as though a camera lady getting some really unflattering shots
of me trying to squeeze into this little hole.
But it does seem as though we've been kind of against the hillside
as if maybe there has been some slippage of the land and
(31:54):
it's fallen in front of it because the gap's really
small and you've got to kind of climb over and in and then it
opens up a little bit more once you get inside so it looks as though it's
maybe it's been a little bit bigger and it's shrunk over time with the
land moving but then once we got inside it just carved in
the stones just like a passageway that went a few meters in and then just stops
and that's it that's literally all it is it looks as though it was on its way
(32:18):
somewhere or maybe it's used for as a store for the quarry or i mean i have
absolutely no idea it is literally a small passageway and then we had to turn
around you You can't stand up.
I mean, I'm five foot eight and I couldn't stand up fully.
And so it's probably about five foot two in height in total.
But no, it was an interesting little place, but it was unflattering to get in
(32:39):
and out of because I'm sure I had to come out bum first as well, didn't I?
I can't remember how I actually got out because I remember having to get on
my hands and neck because I thought, right, oh, you know, this is good.
It's getting there, but it's wet and soggy and then we'll come out and then
I realise that actually I can't get out.
I'm going to have to get up and over to get back out the little hole.
It was a breach. It was. I'm sure
I was on my hands and knees at one point and then I'm sure I had to turn and
(33:01):
come out bum first to get out of the
cave which was beautiful I'm sure Jackie thoroughly enjoyed
that it was well it was amazing I'm just glad
it wasn't me I think no doubt me I would have got stuck or I would have fallen
yeah it was alright but the history we've got some we've got some pictures you've
got some good pictures there but the history that's a little bit it is more
(33:23):
urban legend than anybody actually known what it was for it was a part of the.
Mine it was a part of the quarry does it predate them both that there's not
a great deal of information on that itself, is there?
It's got almost like urban legend sort of sprung up around it.
And one of these urban legends was that it was connected to the Romans.
(33:46):
It was a cave built by the Romans.
But looking at the surrounding area, it just puzzled me as to why.
Because the Romans usually, they do something, they do it. They finish it.
You're expected to lead somewhere rather than just stop.
I mean, if you look at, I mean, we're jumping away, but Hadrian's Wall,
they put a mile castle on the edge of a cliff.
(34:06):
Why? And with the door that faced the cliff. Why? Because it had to match everything else.
The Romans followed through with what they're doing. So to have an unfinished
passageway just seemed a little bit odd for Roman time.
I think when we were there, it started to make a bit more sense in our heads
when we found a rock core in the river, which was a cylinder of solid rock.
(34:29):
And with the place being a quarry,
We kind of hypothesise that maybe the cave was used for storing dynamite.
Yeah. Which seems like a much more likely... Plausible scenario.
Yeah, because that was it, the kind of, they would bore the hole out, wouldn't they?
They would kind of pull a big cylinder out, drop the dynamite in and then blast the site open like that.
(34:55):
So it would absolutely make sense in a cool, dark place to store your dynamite.
Yeah. we're not nowhere near 100% sure
we would need somebody who's got
far more mining knowledge than us to take
a look and say does this look similar to any other sites in the UK that have
this type of little cave structure within it but if it's something that you're
(35:19):
interested in it's a rabbit hole to go down to go down literally to research this cave,
to find out about it to find out its uses and and
then have it documented because nobody does know
so if your research does you know
should like show up some actual evidence some
(35:40):
facts that you know that can be recorded then the
rest of the world don't get to know exactly what this place was
for yeah how it was used and you know why it's
why it is the way it is today yeah which then everyone can
benefit from when they come to do research well no
it was a it was a cool place because that was kind of to the top of
the imagine i would kind of came in from the crook side wasn't it and it kind
(36:05):
of led into a big circle around what would have been the cork works and then
down again past this little color cave and back towards where these terraced
houses used to be but then we walked kind of up
a nice big hill that led to we kind of skirted around a golf course we did and
then there was a nice fence which we.
(36:26):
Went through obviously we're allowed to go through we didn't
just jump under somebody's gone but we went through the fence and then
obviously you're you're in like a forested kind of
nature reserve looking thing with lots of lumps and bumps
now what what did
it used to be so it used to be a place
called bowden close which was a community that
(36:48):
sprung up sorry a quarry and
quarry i was trying to think what it's called and
a quarry and the cork ovens
so when we looked at this map it showed
us a few little hints and there was also some stuff on social media that had
shown some photos of street of terraces called california terrace and another
(37:09):
one called sevastopol and also an old photo of a pub that was called i think
it was called the about and close.
So when we went for a walk, we thought we'd have a look and see what was left of all of this.
Like I say, we parked the car up, walked through the woods and tried to look
(37:29):
at the map and look at what was there now.
With the help of Aaron, he was pointing out on the right, this building here, this used to be a pub.
On the left, with the terrace houses and showing us some old black and white photos.
And then we could see sort of, you.
Tiny little fragments in the landscape of where
(37:50):
railway lines had been so not necessarily a
railway line maybe more like a wagon way that would bring carts
of coal through down onto the main line which was maybe it's about half a mile
away because that was it isn't it because we found that in lungley as well that
all of these mining villages had little little railway tracks that kind of all
(38:13):
led from the villages down onto a main railway line.
So these were all connected by vast tracks and rail networks,
really, weren't they? Yeah.
So these lines all connected up.
We started following some of them. We were able to find just sort of like depressions
more than anything else, wasn't it, sort of in the landscape,
(38:33):
until Aaron took us a little bit further down, just outside of where Bowden
Post was, was to a railway tunnel that we didn't know was there and that had been filled in.
So as you looked across the farmer's fields, you could sort of see a depression,
but you wouldn't have known.
It was a railway line that had been covered over and the tunnel then filled
(38:56):
in so that it was the height of the tunnel. The whole of the field had been raised.
So you would have never known unless you've got your own tour guide like Aaron.
Who was very kind to show us these things.
Since we did that research, it's now being put on case to the past.
And you can now go and research that for yourself, you know,
(39:19):
where it is, have a look at it.
There's some photos online, so you can go and have a look at that for yourself.
But going back to Bowden Close, it was a thriving community with a huge amount
of industry, railway tracks crisscrossing the fields, builds,
cork ovens, a spring, a huge reservoir.
(39:40):
The reservoir, because that was the main bit that we could still see and walk across, wasn't it?
It was kind of the top of the dam, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah.
That bit that is accessible, which you can walk across and you can see where
the water would have flowed.
But unfortunately, when we came to do our walk, we'd had some quite severe storms
(40:01):
and there was a lot of trees over.
So they were sort of laid across the top of the reservoir so you had to do a
little bit of climb and climb basically,
scrambling a lot of scrambling because that again seems to be a theme as to
the where the obviously the mines have closed and the.
I'm assuming that the National Coal Board, who own the land,
(40:23):
they've filled in all of the shafts and they've kind of put trees,
planted the trees on the space.
But given what's underneath, it hasn't been cleared away properly.
Basically, there's not a great deal for the trees' roots to grab hold of.
But still a beautiful little place. And you wouldn't have thought that,
well, I mean, when did this disappear?
(40:44):
In the 1960s? other than the 60s was when it was kind of it's still there in 1965.
Still there still in the 70s yeah actually
I think what website's up here on
what's it called is that the so I'm on it's the
address is www.dmm.org.uk and
(41:08):
that you can search and I've searched a
bowden close colliery here so it gives me the location
it gives me ordnance survey maps and it
gives me shaft details so it says that it
belonged to joseph peas and court
says peas and partners so it was for coal coking and manufacturing fire clay
(41:30):
it was in production from 1854 until 1933 by the looks of this now it says that
the The top of the main seam is abandoned.
This also gives you the years that it was run in and a little bit about people
who worked there as well,
(41:50):
giving you a memoriam so you can find out if you think that maybe one of your
family members worked at Bowden Cross or was connected to Bowden Cross.
It does have a memoriam there to tell you the names.
But that's a national website, is that right?
It is, yeah. kind of you can just get in there and find all
(42:10):
of the collieries yeah this is the durham mining and it's
not a free it's not a free resource so you can just get in there and it's got
all of the history of the collieries within county durham it has yeah
it actually gives you all the collieries in the
uk it's yeah it's uk white not
just for the northeast but it's it's got
a lot a lot of information you could you could
(42:31):
find a lot of statistics word is
the land masters clusters and then
it's got a huge archive and gallery of pictures so
you could you probably even find pictures of whatever you
were looking for because i think that that's how we started on this one wasn't
it and it was you'd been for a walk during covid and thought like i didn't realize
anything used to be here so then it's kind of stemmed from that as to how to
(42:55):
do research and how to find that type of thing because a lot of people think oh well you need to.
You know, you've got to get into the archives or you need special permissions
or you're going to have to pay for these websites in order to do any sort of
significant research when that actually is not the case at all, is it?
No, no, there's a lot of free resources that you can use.
It's just like you say, it's like knowing where to go from and not be seduced by advertising.
(43:21):
Yeah, with paywalls that's going to cost you a fortune when really you just
want to be a little bit nosy sometimes about your local area,
your local history, your own history and your family history.
And you just want to kind of find out a little bit more about it,
but can end up being quite costly when it doesn't need to be.
Absolutely. The first resource we looked at was the National Library of Scotland,
which will give you the link to that.
(43:43):
From there, you go to their digital resources and map images.
It gives you a lot of different traces you
can look at marker with pin marker with
outlines geo reference maps but the
one we do the fun one tell them
tell them we weren't really keen on those ones they seemed a little bit academic
(44:05):
for us and we thought we're boring we wanted the good stuff what's the good
stuff so the good stuff this is we were totally blown away by this and And how
we didn't know about it before for now is a bit, I don't know, it's a mystery.
So I don't know if you want to tell people how to use this resource.
Right. Well, it's got side by side.
(44:28):
So what you have is you've got Google images of now, current maps,
and split screen you have a selection of old maps dating back to the 1830s,
I think is the earliest one, is that right?
I think so. So what you do is, what I did, and I'm sure what everybody does,
is you find your own house.
So you find your house and you drop a pin on your house and then it'll show
(44:50):
you exactly what was on that position in the 1830s.
And you can change it. You've got different, you've got ordnance survey maps,
you've got call maps, railway maps.
So there's loads of different maps going through time, but they do start from 1830s.
And, oh, it's tremendous. I mean, I've lost hours and hours walking around places
that I know were looking at things like, I didn't know what was there.
(45:12):
Like, say, where I'm from, Lummi, there was a hospital. And...
I knew, I'd heard people speak of a hospital, other people who'd done the history
of the village, but I didn't know where it was.
And I couldn't figure out, you know, you're looking at something currently,
you think, I can't quite see it in my head.
But I knew exactly now where that hospital stood because I know what the current
landscape looks like and what was in its place.
(45:33):
So that's what we've been doing.
We've been walking around these maps saying, like, this is what it used to look like.
But then you start to find, as you zoom out a little bit, and you're like,
oh, wow, I didn't, there was all of this here.
And now it just fails and we're finding things that we didn't know was there
before but this is completely free this is this is a free resource available
(45:54):
to absolutely everybody and it is so.
Much fun even if you if you don't have to get out there and you're just a little
bit nosy like I wonder what this used to look like this is the website to get
on because this is tremendous I thoroughly I've lost hours absolutely hours
just walking around Google Maps looking at what it used to look like I mean
like for us say like somewhere like Crook Marketplace you think well well,
(46:14):
has it always been a marketplace? Has it been something else? Has it been Bohan?
So you can go on the modern map, click on Crook Marketplace or Sheldon Marketplace,
you know, drop your pin there and then start looking at the different maps,
the different date ranges on the maps.
And you can go back and find out, oh, it's always been a marketplace.
(46:37):
Or, you know, it's the site of an old church or it's the site of an old school.
Or, you know, it was a derelict area. you know
or maybe it was just always a field and that marketplace has
sprung up in the last 50 years or something but
if you are curious about where you live and you want to find out this is this
is this is definitely thing i mean one of the things that's got me excited which
(46:59):
might be we'll mention it in another another time but it was in chester lee
street and i'm pretty sure it's sestry of primary school and kind of backs on
the parkview comprehensive school on church chair.
In 1830s 1840s exactly where the primary school sits as in the playground it
says it's a Roman fort old Roman fort so obviously there's evidence underneath
(47:20):
the primary school of a Roman fort that was there and there was a national school's graveyard.
Which now just sits on a bit of land which it's just a hill that you can walk
down on your way to Chester Park and it says it used to be a national school's graveyard,
and it's stuff like that you know when things pop up and it's like hello I made
a Roman fort and you put a primary school on it and then there was a graveyard
down the hill and they sat in the other and it's like I had no idea anything
(47:42):
like that used to be there and that's definitely something I'll be spending
some time investigating now I've seen it,
so like this tool sort of taking it back to the archaeology really is when it
comes to digging anywhere you have to know,
do some research you have to find out as much as you can on paper before you
(48:04):
start digging any holes and one of the prerequisites has got to be a desk-based
assessment and this map forms,
part of that because then you can start building up a picture of an area by
looking at these maps looking at what was there before and then using maybe
something like keys to the past we can We'll give you the website address for that as well.
(48:25):
That also lists by date range, again, items that have been found.
So say if you were thinking, oh, like, you know, is there anything medieval being found here?
It gives you a list of, you know, like a medieval brooch or a medieval coin or something like that.
So you can start building up a picture.
So if you wanted to research, not necessarily did, but if you wanted to just
(48:46):
research where you live, you can then start using the map and keys to the past combined.
To start forming a bit of a history of where you live by object,
but also by the maps and the roads, the streets, the fields, the wells,
mills, collieries, all of that kind of stuff.
(49:08):
You'd start really putting history back together again on paper,
where if you looked at that place today, it would be vastly different.
Because it's a puzzle, isn't it? It's putting the mysteries back together.
Yeah. And if you're like me, like me and Sarah do, we've spent like many an
(49:28):
hour looking at this, trying to see what's gone before.
And for me, one of the things that I was interested in was old manor houses,
just because we were doing miners, we were doing...
Poor end of society with with the church schools
and the terrace housing but we thought we might
(49:50):
want to have a look at you know like where the other half live
and how they live and we came across a website
called decamillo so decamillo is
a database which is a continuing project that lists
every country house built in britain and ireland that's standing
or that's demolished so you might
find on your map as you're looking it
(50:12):
might say willington hall and you
might think oh that sounds like like willington hall sounds like
it might be a manor house so you can then
go onto the decamillo database see if you can find willington hall and see what
it comes up with you know see if there's more information you can find on willington
hall who built here who lived when it was demolished because you would probably
(50:36):
know if it would be knocked down or not.
But yeah, it's another one that if you are curious, you can start with the maps,
find the hole, go into De Camillo.
Oh, the other way around. If you go into De Camillo, you can go into De Camillo,
type in County Durham and it will bring you the list of holes that are there or were there.
(50:56):
And then you can choose which one you want to research. go back
to the national library of scotland's maps pinpoint
the map and then try and find the hole and find out
yourself any information you can about when the
hole was built and when it was demolished and then of course you can always
use google i mean that's another one yeah i mean google's everybody everybody
(51:17):
knows how to use google but google scholar as well can bring up some you can
actually get the archaeological journals and some of which are free about about
obviously digs and publications that have taken place.
And you just put into Google, Google Scholar.
Brings up a whole different database, basically brings up the academic database
of information with journals and publications of PhDs, thesis and scientific
(51:41):
reports and what have you.
Everything else, all of that's on there, like overarching, just kind of like larger.
It depends on how deep you want to go with your research.
I mean, if you're a history society or something like that, and you're wanting
to go a little bit further than, you know, than somebody just sat at home who's
just a little bit curious, then you can take it further.
(52:03):
You can look more into the academic papers that are being written about places
and historic events and facts.
But one of the things that you found, which I thought was quite interesting.
So we found a hole that we wanted to look at.
We then found who had built
it and why they'd built it which was the hall
(52:24):
at Redwood Colliery the Unthank Terrace
Unthank or the Eshwood Eshwood Eshwood Hall I don't know the name of the colliery
I mean Eshwood Hall because it was Eshwood Hall at the time wasn't it so there
was Eshwood Eshwood Hall so that was the from De Camillo from De Camillo because
that was the main owner wasn't it yeah.
(52:48):
So from Ishwood Hall, then I did just a very, very light search on Ishwood Hall,
which came up with a few different publications, a few different things that had been written.
But one of the things was it gave the names and ages of some of the people who
worked there, which got me thinking about ancestry.
(53:09):
And you came across something, a resource for the ancestry.
Yeah three bmd so three birth marriages
and deaths and it's a really really basic website but you
pop in it has a search function you pop in a surname so
you can start with yourself and work backwards and it
has little functions like ancestry find my
past it's that type of thing but obviously it's a much more basic
(53:31):
search engine and you put in the surname that
you want the date range that you're looking for and hit search
and it will basically list all of the people with that
surname in that time frame and you can
kind of find it's a good little resource if you're looking
at your family tree or like you say you can kind of put all of these things
together so you can have search in your family line via free bmd or with ancestry
(53:54):
find my person all of the other websites like that that are available we started
off in lonely yeah to have a little look about then we're headed to bowden close
with aaron for a look at the corkworks quarry.
Terraced houses, which are no longer there. We went to Highjobs Hill to find
a coal shaft. Did you ask?
(54:15):
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We did. So this coal shaft was in a coal park.
And it's another one of these hidden histories.
So this, we found a write-up that was in one of the newspapers.
And it said that the guys who'd worked there had worked really well with very
little in the way of any accidents.
And they were taken to the Horseshoe pub by the owners of the pit for a subduous
(54:40):
meal and refreshments for being a good set of lights and working really hard,
which was another hidden history
thing that, you know, literally on our doorstep, you would never know.
You would walk past it a thousand times and never know it was there.
Because we parked in, it was like a golf club, wasn't it?
We were parked up and I'm looking towards the golf club and Aaron's like knopping the trees.
(55:05):
So again, me and Jackie just trustingly follow Aaron into a wooded area off the side of a car park.
But seeing that though, there was actually more evidence of structure there
than there was in the whole of the Bowden Cross area because there was this
brickwork there that looked as though it was from the...
I'm sure Aaron mentioned what...
(55:26):
So where we stood, we do have a little bit of videos. So I think we might put
that on our website, the podcast website rather, or the Facebook group so that people can see it.
And that was the brick lined entrance to the mine.
Obviously, you know, everything else is gone from there.
The pit headgear would have been above it with the wheel and it would have been
(55:49):
where the cage went down and lowered the miners down into the shaft so they
could then work the coal face.
But like I said nothing's there now just the hole the hole.
In the ground the reclined hole in the ground yeah but there was like some rubble
of like a building that was the first one and that was probably like a yeah
(56:10):
I don't know obviously it's one of those things where if you go onto,
the side by side map you could pinpoint,
that yeah the Jobs Hill coal mine
and have a look and maybe find out what that building
was could be an auxiliary building and the office could have been yeah could
have been like a changing rooms or something for the miners to get changed and
(56:34):
I mean that was if you didn't know that was there you would never no I mean
that's a pile of mossy stones wasn't it yeah,
but no that was that was well hidden well hidden and quite a shock to see this
huge hole in the ground full of cities in bikes and rubbish that had obviously
just been thrown down there yeah,
(56:54):
So we're really grateful to Aaron for showing us around. So thank you very much, Aaron.
And I think we may schedule another walk around with Aaron to go and have a
look at some outfits at some point. Yes, absolutely.
I mean, Aaron, he's quite a contributor on Crook Past, Present and Future and
a couple of other local sites, I believe.
(57:15):
Very knowledgeable and has a lot of photographs and a lot of...
Yeah, especially Bowsing Closet, a really good archive. of information yeah
so any more any questions on that anybody want to know any more about that Aaron
Cohen I'm sure you're not mind you had given him a message through Facebook yeah through them,
(57:36):
local history sites yeah so thank you Aaron for your time yes thank you very
much thank you very much to Aaron,
greater the gap the more years that go by the harder it is to kind of have any
sort of relatability to that time into why your village is important into why
your community is where it is. Do you know what I mean?
And it becomes ever more difficult, whereas these side-by-side maps,
(57:59):
to be able to see, look, this is why our community is here.
This is why our village was built, because of this mine, because of all of these
mines, because of this industry.
And this industry got the ships out around the world and we got trade,
and this is what made the Industrial Revolution happen, was what was going on
in these four villages in County Durham.
(58:19):
And it's trying to kind of you know sit with your kids and be like let's have
a route around on these maps let's have a little look and get them interested
and get them kind of excited to why their little village is what it is now and
why it's not as big as it used to be and why it's so bloody quiet.
Because it's like you know I always think of Beamish and everybody you know,
(58:40):
nice to go to Beamish but they have that they've got the pit in the miners cottages
but that smell you know the coal the smell and the noise and the blow and the.
Who did I don't know what's it called
the whistle is it just a whistle on the train no like
on the mine you know on the pole yes yeah I don't
(59:02):
know I haven't a clue but you know to imagine that
in your village or like all that going on it's tremendous
but it's sad it's sad that it is a case of you know
we know we're a mining community but we don't really
know do we it makes it relatable that
when you can see it if you're at sort
of a secretary school yeah age and and
(59:23):
you're doing sort of history yeah if you
can't see something it's very difficult to relate
to it and if you're having a class and it's talking about you know
that like how great the northeast was for for coal mining for shipbuilding and
things like that and you can't see the shipworks and you can't see the core
works it gets boring really quick yeah but history at school is boring jackie
(59:46):
and it is it's poor for if you can have a map and you can look and you but look,
two streets away from where I live was Opencast Mine and it was a sunken pit.
And you can walk there and look at it.
So this is where the people who worked here lived and this is where they worked.
(01:00:07):
This is where they went and did the shopping.
It all then becomes a little bit more closer to home. Yeah, and more relatable.
And one of the things that we managed to find when we were looking at the Ashwood Hall,
was a list a very such a
short list but a little list of some of the people who
worked at the hall one of the
(01:00:28):
things i found was quite was a bit it was ironic really
was that one of the gardeners that worked
there is recorded as living in lungley and we thought we thought it was quite
nice i mean you know it's it's obviously like for their family to yeah searching
for them but it It took us full circle because it took us kind of like around
(01:00:49):
the northeast a little bit and then back to Lumley, which is where this guy was from.
Yes. This was, you know, this was a guy who was a gardener, a young man who was a gardener there.
And he was born and raised in Lumley. And we thought that was great.
So we started in Lumley. We went across to Bowden. Yeah. We went to Jobs Hill.
Yeah. We then came to...
(01:01:11):
Down to New Brunsford. Down to New Brunsford. Yeah. And then brought ourselves
full circle back to Lumley. Back off to great Lumley.
A nice circle of coal mining and industry and society and community as well.
And all because we found two or three resources that were free. Free resources.
(01:01:33):
Exciting resources as well. I mean, like I say, the National Library of Scotland
side-by-side map is an absolute winner. and totally highly recommend to anybody
who is a little bit curious about anywhere.
That's definitely the first place to go to. And then Di Camillo.
Give a look for the houses and halls, if that's something that you're interested in.
(01:01:56):
If you want to, you know, if you
find somewhere on a map or you know there was a hall or there still is.
Yeah. And you want to know a little bit more about it. And there was the coal
mining, where you brought the list of coal. Oh, yes.
The National Mining Museum. Yes.
Yes. So their website is extremely brilliant. Very, very well populated with information.
(01:02:22):
Yeah. And we had the free birth, marriages and deaths for if you want to get
a little bit closer to home.
That's a free resource where you can start with your family history or kind
of if you come across an area that you think your relatives lived,
you know, back in the day, then you kind of start making searches through there.
Yeah. And that's nationwide, isn't it? it is yeah just you
(01:02:43):
know they see if you even yeah such a search you know
if you yeah like i say it's a basic interface you
just hit the search button and add pop the information that it
asks and say what you can what you can pull from there and
i mean obviously if you do have the the popular ones you've got ancestry which
will give more census information as well with through ancestry you can search
areas as well as people they do often have a free two weeks to use it so you
(01:03:11):
can If you're working quick, if you've got a fortnight off,
you can get your free and cancel it before it renews.
You can get two weeks free on that one.
I think if I'm in my past, I often do a free trial to get you up and running sometimes.
It's always good to have a little look first. But we're definitely not sponsored
by them. No, not sponsored by anybody.
(01:03:32):
If Manchester Street did want to sponsor our little podcast, just drop us a line.
I do use all of them I mean you can't knock the free ones off Oh absolutely
It's somewhere to start isn't it And sometimes you might just find everything
you need From the free stuff Because sometimes that's it You just don't know where to start,
(01:03:55):
It's getting started Sometimes you think Oh I want
to have a look Or I wonder what this was And it's just not knowing where it
starts I think if you've got a question And it starts off with I wonder then
these free resources can start pointing you in the right direction and I mean
as well anything to do with the history of Great Lumley the national schools,
(01:04:16):
which I haven't found a great deal of information on,
I know that there were schools that were set up by the church but that national
schools graveyard really got me curious anybody knows anything more about Great
Lumley or Ashford Hall and New Bransfith, Minantown and Bowden Course,
any new photographs or information,
would absolutely love to hear about that so that's
(01:04:37):
all until next month see you then we'll be back next time with more tales from
the trowel make sure you like follow and subscribe from wherever you get your
podcasts so you never miss an episode tales from the trowel an archaeology news
northeast production in association with bitmatic productions.
(01:04:57):
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