MEMORIES 119featured thecoalmines to theeast of Tow Law:East Hedleyhope,Hedleyhope and Hedley Hill. It also featured a Page in History from The Northern Echo of March 23, 1918, which had a main headline of: “Germans claim 16,000 prisoners and 200 guns. Battle renewed with fiercest vigour.”

‘DID you know there was a connection between the collieries and the battle,” asks David Charlesworth

Of course we didn’t.

“The pre-war manager of East Hedleyhope and Hedleyhope collieries was Lieutenant- Colonel Bernard Hedley Charlton MC who died on March 22, 1918, in that renewed battle.”

That renewed battle was the German Spring Offensive, the last hurrah of the enemy which needed to break the British and the French quickly before the Americans joined the war.

The Germans chose to attack the area of St Quentin, a small French town on the River Somme, with the hope of breaking the Allies’ lines and pushing west to capture Amiens.

The offensive began at 4.40am on March 21, 1918.

Over the next five hours, the Germans launched more than 1.1 million shells – the biggest bombardment of the war.

So great was it that by the end of March 22, the British were almost in full retreat.

“The enemy has made some progress at certain points,” said the Echo’s front page on March 23. “Our losses have inevitably been considerable.

“Our troops are fighting with the greatest gallantry.”

Yet quickly, the German stormtroopers became exhausted, particularly as their supply lines couldn’t keep up with their advance.

On April 5, with his troops unable to capture Amiens, German General Erich Ludendorff called off the assault.

He had lost 239,000 men in a fortnight.

The Allies – British, British Empire, French and Americans – had lost 255,000.

One of those was Lt Col Charlton, 32, of the 4th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, who died at about 6pm on the second day of the battle. He’d been born in 1885 in Guisborough where his father – nicknamed “Ratchet Willie”

– was an ironstone mine manager.

Bernard went to the Royal School of Mines and had just taken up his role at Tow Law when the war broke out.

In 1915, he married Dorothy Joliffe from Newbus Grange, Darlington, and he was gassed at Ypres. In 1916, he was awarded the Military Cross for “exemplary gallantry”, was twice mentioned in despatches and was once again wounded.

In 1917, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenantcolonel and in March 1918 he was laid to rest in Roisel Cemetery, his grave marked by a little wooden cross.

In peacetime, the British government replaced the markers with the sturdy white headstones, and families of the deceased could at their own expense collect the markers.

The Charltons obviously felt this was worthwhile, and for many years Lt-Col Charlton’s marker hung in the church of St Philip and St James in Tow Law. Because of its rarity – only one other marker is known to exist – last March, it was presented to the Green Howards museum in Richmond.

  • IS the middle name of Lt- Col Bernard Hedley Charlton, the manager of Hedleyhope and East Hedleyhope collieries, just a coincidence?

In terms of the derivation of the place name, in old English, a hope is a valley, a ley is a clearing of trees, and hed may either be heather or heath.

So Hedleyhope is a clearing overgrown by heather, or on a heath, in a valley.