All aboard for Piercebridge

IN the days of warm beer and maids cycling down lanes to church, Piercebridge was a typical country railway station.

It was the first stop out of Darlington on the line to Barnard Castle. In the years after the Second World War, 14 passenger trains a day arrived there, and the world was a Piercebridge passenger’s oyster: from Saltburn in the east to Tebay over Stainmore in the west, anywhere was possible.

On summer Sunday mornings, the “rail, road and steamer” special departed from Piercebridge – for ten shillings, you were taken by rail to Penrith, road to Pooley Bridge in the Lake District, and steamboat across Ullswater to Glenridding. And then steam, road and rail back home.

PIERCEBRIDGE: The station and the signalbox on May 16, 1963. The station house still stands as a private residence beside the old Roman road. Photograph by John Boyes and courtesy of the JW Armstrong Trust

Not quite as farflung but just as exciting was the last train to Darlington on Friday and Saturday nights. It left at 10.30pm, packed with partygoers returning from dances at The George Hotel, which was then one of the hottest nightspots.

During the war, the station was thronged with servicemen making the most of their leave. Unfortunately, to reach the Darlington platform they had to walk across the tracks, which had fatal consequences on at least one occasion.

Piercebridge was such a railway centre that in the early 1950s, Princess Alexandra of Kent slept in a royal train in the sidings. She was about 18, and wished to make a phone call to her family back in a palace. The stationmaster’s phone had to be disinfected before her royal hands could touch it.

Just as Piercebridge served passengers of all social standing, so it served the rural community. Local farmers would buy cattle on Northallerton market on a Wednesday, have them put on a train and they’d turn up at Piercebridge at lunchtime on Thursday to be driven to their new fields.

At harvest-time, farmers hired sacks from the station for a penny each. Each sack held 16 stone of corn, and was returned full to the goods yard so a special train could take it away for grinding.

The run-down of the railways in the early 1960s put an end to this way of life. The closing of the Stainmore line in 1962 curtailed passenger traffic on the Barnard Castle line, and the Beeching Axe of 1964 delivered the final blow.

Len Abram – who became a familiar face on Darlington’s Bank Top station in the later years of his railway career – was the last signalman at Piercebridge. “We had the passenger service up to Middleton-in-Teesdale, and we had goods – mineral traffic from the Forcett line, general goods for local pick-up, and farm machinery and fertilisers for the Teesside Farmers store in Cock Lane,” he says.

RAILWAYMAN: Len Abram, the last Piercebridge signalman, waves off his last train at Bank Top in 2007

From his signalbox beside the station, he was in charge of the line from the Hopetown Junction in Darlington, where the Barnard Castle branchline left the Stockton and Darlington Railway. It went over the level crossings at Mount Pleasant and Carlbury and then came into Piercebridge, where there was access into the sidings and another level crossing over the old Roman road.

From Piercebridge westwards, through Gainford, to the next signalbox at Winston, it was a single track line, worked by the tablet system. Before a train could access the track, the signalman had to give the driver a unique tablet which the driver placed in a pouch and which he handed to the signalman at the end of the line.

“I would put in the code 31 to say it was a passenger train, or 3 if it was goods, and the signalman at Winston would acknowledge and then we would both press our buttons at the same time so that I could release the tablet in my box, and give it to the driver,” says Len.

The Beeching Axe meant Piercebridge station closed to passengers on November 30, 1964, and to all traffic on April 5, 1965. Len was transferred to signalboxes at Upleatham and Hopetown, and for his last 30 years worked as what became known as a “train despatcher” at Bank Top until his retirement in 2007.

SNOW SCENE: A goods train entering the yard at Piercebridge on December 28, 1962. Photograph by John Boyes and courtesy of the JW Armstrong Trust. Today’s front cover shows a train entering Piercebridge from Barnard Castle, going past Len Abram’s signalbox. It was taken in 1957-58 by JW Armstrong himself

THE interest in Piercebridge station was sparked by Memories 232, which made the most of the reopened landslip road between Darlington and Barnard Castle by careering down Carlbury.

Carlbury, you will remember, is a lost hamlet which once stood at the foot of the bank near Piercebridge. It was on a crossroads, with the A67 running east to west, and the former Roman road of Dere Street going north to south.

Carlbury came into being shortly after the opening of the Darlington to Barnard Castle railway in 1856. Piercebridge station was a stiff walk outside the village, so Carlbury grew up to serve the station. At the hamlet’s centre was the Railway Inn, which served those who had made the stiff walk.

Margaret Hutchins in Newton Aycliffe has reason to remember the Railway Inn at Carlbury – it was where, as a child, she got her hair cut.

LOST HAMLET: A cart careers down Carlbury bank into Piercebridge on this Edwardian postcard. The building on the left is the Railway Inn

Her father was Laurence Boynton – he could be seen on the Dad’s Army line-up outside the Railway Inn in Memories 232. Laurence was a farmhand and they lived at Cabin House, a field or so north of Piercebridge station.

“There was another farmer called Fred,” says Margaret. “My father used to take me down on a Sunday morning and Fred would cut my hair in a back room at the Railway. I think he thought he was shearing a sheep, but in those days you had a fringe at the front and it was straight round the back.”

Another caller was confused as Memories 232 said the Railway closed in the late 1940s whereas he remembered having a legal pint in there in the early 1950s. We’ve reconsulted our notes and, yes, the Railway ‘s licence was terminated on July 1, 1955. It was demolished soon after so that the A67 could be straightened to bypass Piercebridge.

MEMORIES 232 contained a question about pre-railway quarries at Carlbury. It was posed by Robin Cook whose village of Swainby, at the foot of the Cleveland Hills, greatly expanded in the first years of the 19th Century due to the growth of leadmining. In Swainby’s archives, there are records of cartloads of limestone being transported the 25 miles from Carlbury and Piercebridge to build the leadminers’ houses. In many cases, the cost of the transport was more than the cost of a cartload of stone.

But where did the stone come from?

Several people mentioned the quarries at Barton and Forcett. In the 1860s, little branchlines off the Darlington to Barnard Castle line were built to get the stone out of these quarries, and before that, it would be a little odd for a poor horse to carry the stone north to Carlbury only to turn round and carry it south to Swainby.

However, the land both north and south of the Tees is riddled with quarries. “I can count five quarries, one of which is now the A1(M) Barton interchange where you used to be able to see where they burned the rock to make lime fertiliser,” says Annie Wharton, who was born at Low Carlbury before moving with her husband to farm at Low Merrybent.

“There were a lot of tunnels on the farm which were the result of copper mining,” says Annie, who now lives in Aldbrough St John. “I was taken down one once but was not happy at going too deep.”

In a similar vein, Pat Atkinson points out that there old quarries at Foxberry, Caldwell and West Layton.

A different sort of theory came from David Oliver, who wondered whether Swainby could have been built from stones from Piercebridge’s Roman fort that an enterprising villager was dismantling and selling for cash.

And Steve Hayes pointed out that there was a quarry at the foot of Carlbury bank. It was west of the old Roman road – the new Sam Turner’s country store is on top of its cliff.

A 4ft Roman milestone was found in this quarry in 1953. Now in the Bowes Museum, it is presumed that this stone had once stood tall beside Dere Street. There is a crude inscription on its top – "MPCGallVall Maximiano el" – which apparently translates as: "For the Emperor Caesar Galerius Valerius Maximianus Pius Felix".

Galerius was a Bulgarian peasant herdsman who joined the Roman army and did so well that in 305AD he became Roman emperor. His reign, noted for its persecution of Christians, came to an end when he contracted a horrible disease: his genitals swelled up, his ulcerous body became infested with worms and he stank so badly that some of his doctors were unable to approach him.

So he executed them.

He then appointed more doctors, but when they failed to improve his condition, he executed them too.

Then, doctorless, he died in May 311AD.

So the milestone found in the Carlbury quarry must date from between 305AD and 311AD.

However, this pit – beside the A67 – cannot be the one that provided stone for Swainby as it is described as a gravel quarry. Anyone got any more clues?

Whorlton Castle near Swainby

SWAINBY is just a couple of miles east along the A172 from Ingleby Arncliffe, which featured in Memories last week.

You will remember that the 100-year-old water tower, and 15 gardens, are open to the public both today and tomorrow from 1pm to 5pm.

You could make a whole day of it by venturing to the picturesque Swainby, with its beck running along the main street, and visiting nearby Whorlton Castle.

It dates from the 12th Century; Edward II stayed in it during a deer hunting holiday in the 14th Century, and Oliver Cromwell’s troops fired cannon at its impressive gatehouse during the 17th Century civil war. You can still see the marks the cannon made, and it is free to get in.

With many thanks to Richard Barber of the JW Armstrong Trust for his help with pictures