A shelf-load of local books for Christmas

WARTIME newspapers provide a fascinating day-by-day running commentary on the First World War and Bob Hall has chronicled how the war unfolded in the Auckland and County Chronicle, pulling out the reports about Spennymoor, and the towns and villages around, including Chilton and Ferryhill.

For example, there is a report from January 1915 about Private D Lightfoot, a porter at Ferryhill station, who in the first few months of the war had twice been buried alive in the trenches. Then an explosion had blown him out of his own trench into a neighbouring one, knocking him unconscious and, finally, when he’d ventured out to get water, he’d been caught by the Germans who tied him up with other prisoners in one of their trenches.

The Germans celebrated their capture with some wine, and while sleeping it off, Pte Lightfoot picked up a bayonet, released himself and 12 others and stole away to safety, taking an enemy sentry with him for good measure.

And, if that wasn’t enough, the report finished with Lightfoot stumbling across a farmhouse containing 50 Germans. “Lightfoot had bayoneted three when his bayonet broke,” it said.

In June 1915, the paper carried a letter that Private R Gaskell of Thornley had written home from hospital in Rouen where he was recovering from a gas attack. “I can tell you it is terrible, nothing but brutal murder... It had left me with pains in my chest and sides, and sometimes I have a numb feeling and dizziness...

“We were like fish out of water. You have seen a fish’s mouth open and shut? Well, we were just the same, gasping for breath. I can only say it was the most awful experience I ever had.”

There are loads of little stories, plus newspaper pictures of soldiers, dotted throughout the book, which also contains details of 750 Spennymoor men commemorated on local cenotaphs and memorials. It is a very dippable chronicle, and Memories will probably be dipping often into it in the future.

BLOB £1 from each copy sold goes to Help for Heroes. It is available for £10 from K&S Newsforce, Cheapside, Spennymoor; George Teasdale, 75 High Street, Spennymoor, and the post offices in Ferryhill and Chilton.

Zeppelins Over the North-East: The Airship Raids of WW1 Between the Tweed and Tees by Ian Hall (Wanney Books, £4.50)

THE North-East was the target of the second airship raid of the war when, on April 14, 1915, Zeppelin L9, which had been on reconnaissance duty in the North Sea, decided to chance its arm and attack Tyneside in broad daylight. It must have been an astonishing sight for civilians, who would not have been used to seeing anything beyond birds flying in the skies, as this giant cigar quietly came into view. It followed the coast north to Blyth, meandered inland towards the Tyne, dropping bombs as it went. Fortunately, no one was killed, but a woman and child were injured at Wallsend.

For a couple of years after this, Zeppelins were almost frequent visitors to the North-East. Perhaps the most notorious date was April 5, 1916, when Skinningrove ironworks was the target, followed by the large cokeworks at Auckland Park – the Echo front page recording this event was reproduced in our Remembrance Sunday special edition.

This booklet, inspired by the author’s grandmother’s tale of seeing a Zeppelin over Bedlington during the war, records all the attacks on the region, and tells how the Zeppelins were eventually sent packing.

Northumbria at War, 1914-18, on old picture postcards, by Andrew Brooks (Reflections of a Bygone Age, £4.95)

WRITING a postcard was the First World War equivalent of sending out a tweet, and this is a lovely collection of wartime pictures with a North-East connection – and, despite the title, there is plenty of Durham interest here, as well.

There are obviously pictures of soldiers, tanks and the damage done by the seaborne bombardment of Hartlepool, but the biggest surprise is the section devoted to humorous and saucy postcards. People obviously needed to keep their spirits up, and so there’s a postcard showing an exasperated Kaiser surrounded by fallen troops saying: “We’d never have kom if we’d known der Durhams were here!” But a few of them, like the one with the lass provocatively lifting her skirt and urging her man to “kiss me on the spot” were really rather racy.

BLOB Contact Reflections of a Bygone Age in Nottingham on 0115-937-4079 and at postcardcollecting.co.uk

The Forgotten Man by Sheila Crossman (£10)

THIS is the second of two volumes that tell the remarkable story of Joseph Shepherd, who was the secretary of the Cleveland Miners’ Association in its early, fractious days.

The ironstone industry in Cleveland exploded into life in the 1850s, and went into terminal decline in the 1880s. Its pits – 70 opened in three decades – were scattered from the coast to the moors, across the low floodplain and at the top of the Cleveland Hills. The ownership of the mines was also scattered, but nothing was so splintered as the workforce which had indulged in a variety of local loyalties and politic extremes.

In the 1870s, Shepherd successfully drew the men into an association which did eventually improve hours, wages and conditions. But it was a battle – on occasions, a physical fight, often fuelled by the bottle.

Due to his difficult nature, Shepherd was only in his post for four years, and when he disappeared from Saltburn in 1876, it was said he had gone to a lunatic asylum in Lincolnshire.

“To many people, this would not have come as a surprise,” says Sheila. “His critics had seen him as a hard-drinking man, prone to violence when roused, unrestrained in his vehemence, and when writing his numerous letters to the press, intimidating and threatening.”

Because of this reputation, his name has been expunged from Cleveland history, and his end is unknown – he may have fizzled out in a drunken fracas near Sheffield.

But through great research and fascinating detail, Mrs Crossman is resurrecting him and telling a great story about the orefield.

BLOB The book is £10, with profits going to Guisborough Methodist Church. It is available from the Guisborough Bookshop and the Ironstone Mining Museum at Skinningrove, or directly from the author with £2 for P&P. Write to 48, Deepdale, Guisborough, TS14 8JY, email: c.crossman@ntlworld.com.

Steetley: Dolomite and Sea Water Operations in the North of England Volume II: Sea Water Magnesia (1936-1952) by Robert Dunn and John Smailes (Connoisseur Crafts, £15)

IN volume one of their trilogy, the authors establish Steetley as an uncontroversial quarrying company in the Coxhoe area of Durham, and nothing quite prepares the reader for the direction that volume two takes.

Because the dolomite stone, with high magnesium content, produced at Coxhoe was ideal for blast furnace construction because it could withstand high temperatures – in all Europe, it could only be matched by the output of Austria. But Austria, of course, was under German influence, and so Britain needed Steetley to keep its steel industry operational in the dark days of the 1930s. In fact, as the war neared, magnesium also became a vital component in munitions.

But the Steetley people wondered whether they could make artificial magnesia using another substance that the North-East has in abundance: sea-water. In 1936, they sent a horse into the water off Hartlepool to fill a barrel. At Coxhoe, in a domestic bathtub, the dolomite stone, which had been “calcined in a baby rotary kiln” was introduced to the seawater, a chemical reaction occurred and magnesium hydroxide was created – the compound the war effort demanded.

Secretly, guarded by their own Home Guard troop, they went into production at the Palliser Works on the seafront at Hartlepool, the local residents being allowed to think that herrings were being smoked behind its secure fencing.

The book is as long and as detailed as its title suggests, but there is a very intriguing industrial story at its heart.

BLOB Available for £15 plus £3 P&P from J Smailes, 5 Lichfield Road, Newton Hall, Durham DH1 5QW, or email smailesjohn0@gmail.com

Care For Prisoners and Their Families in the North-East, 1882-2007, by Ruth Cranfield (NEPACS, £6).

ANY historical aspect of life can be found to be of interest if properly examined, and here the North-Eastern Prison After Care Society looks at how society has helped convicts once they have served their sentence.

The Reverend George Hans Hamilton, chaplain of Durham Gaol, was an important early figure. He wrote of how men and women were just turned out into Elvet and expected to immediately start afresh: “No one looked after them, and there were many who left prison without a hat or a coat, or without shoes, and that with perhaps six or eight inches of snow on the ground. Now the real question placed before a fellow creature in such a predicament was: shall I starve or steal?”

He led the way in creating a refuge in Durham to help newly-released prisoners. Although it grew into the Durham Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, he at first didn’t give it a name because that would only cause embarrassment to the people associated with it, both the felons themselves and the charitable workers trying to help them. It was a tough mission, because few found sympathy for criminals, and very few prisoners, with the scent of freedom in their nostrils, were willing to submit themselves to a back-to-work programme.

Yet Hamilton helped the men reach a port or a colliery where they might find work at sea or underground where fewer questions were asked, and he tried to help the “fallen women” – a much harder task – learn a household skill. In his first six years, from 1848, he helped 1,093 prisoners and, according to his figures, only 129 failed to make good.

The book looks at how attitudes towards prisoners have changed throughout the decades, and tries to inject a little compassion into the debate.

BLOB Go to nepacs.co.uk or call 0191-332-3810 for further information.