Chris Lloyd

Chief Features Writer

Latest articles from Chris Lloyd

The King Edward VII Bridge in Newcastle with the Durham and Northumberland signs which are no longer there. Picture: Ken Taylor Collection

ECHO MEMORIES Zero posts and border signs: relics from another age left beside our railways
IT wasn’t just roads that had mile markers on them: railways did, too, as Memories 701 noted.

Dick Turpin astride his horse Black Bess

ECHO MEMORIES A journey on the A67: Dick Turpin, the Baydale Beck, a lost white cross and a gin-gan

PERHAPS legendary highwayman Dick Turpin really did stay at the Baydale Beck Inn on the western edge of Darlington.

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Great Darlingtonians with fabulous facial hair

ECHO MEMORIES Darlington's fabulous facial hair over the decades charted in new exhibition

IN September 2002, the BBC's Inside Out programme declared Darlington to be the "hairdressing capital of Britain" as its 97th hairdresser had just opened.

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The six gallant boys of Brompton, from a local newspaper in December 1914

ECHO MEMORIES The six brave brothers caught up in the war's first gas attack
“I HAVE had a letter from Jack informing me of Sep’s death, poor lad,” wrote Lance-Corporal Oswald Garbutt of the Green Howards back to his parents, William and Anne, in Brompton, just outside Northallerton, following the news that their youngest son had been killed in the First World War.

Bishop Auckland Market Place, by Gary Miller

ECHO MEMORIES Painting the buzz of Bishop Auckland in the old days
“AS a young lad, I worked on the pots and pans stall on the old market,” says artist Gary Miller whose view of Bishop Auckland market graces today’s front cover. “I remember getting picked up really early on a Thursday morning and helping a gentleman called Geoff set up the stall. I would then head to school and come straight back afterwards to help pack the van away.”

The painted poppies on top of Pieter Vermote's headstone in Sedgefield

ECHO MEMORIES Solved: the mystery of Sedgefield's poppy stones on WW1 soldier's headstone
LAST week, we told the story of Belgian soldier Pieter Vermote who lies in the old cemetery in Sedgefield, opposite the site of Winterton hospital, where he died in 1918. We were intrigued to find a couple of polished pebbles on top of his headstone with poppies painted on them.