Lost in the blizzard

THE snow was so deep that a “storm gang”

of 200 men was sent out along the tracks to try to dig out four mineral trains that had become stranded in 35ft deep drifts over the Stainmore summit.

“Making inquiries at Barnard Castle yesterday, a Northern Echo reporter was informed that this is the worst snowstorm that has been experienced in the last 50 years,”

said the Echo on Wednesday, March 15, 1916.

THE report continued: “The snowploughs have had a remarkble experience, and on Sunday one of them derailed.

“A breakdown gang had to go to the rescue from Darlington at midnight, but the plough remained off the line yesterday.”

It was against this snowy backdrop that John Clarkson, 63, set out at 4.15pm that Sunday from his home in Cotherstone.

He was due on duty at 5pm at the Tees Valley Junction signal cabin. The junction was west of Barnard Castle, where the Tees Valley Railway to Middleton-in-Teesdale branched off from the snowbound mainline to Kirkby Stephen.

At 6.04pm, Arthur Nottingham, the signal porter at Cotherstone, received a message from Barnard Castle station saying that Mr Clarkson had not made it to the cabin.

He set out with a search party from Cotherstone. They found the signalman lying in a ditch about three-quarters of a mile south of the village.

“With assistance, Mr Nottingham got the body removed.

There were no signs of life about it,” reported the Echo. The dead man was stretchered back to his home, Pensbury Cottage, and to his widow, Jane.

An inquest was held in the house two days later. Jane said that her late husband had been in good health – “only before he left home he remarked that he never felt better” – and had walked to work along the railway track, as he had for much of the past 16 years.

She explained that to reach the signalbox in any other way would have required him to trespass on private property.

Engine driver George Thexton, of Shildon, was called to give evidence. He had been driving a snowplough on the Tees Valley Railway on the day in question, and would have passed the spot where the body was found at 4.30pm when he would have been doing between ten and 15mph, whistling frequently.

“He did not see anyone on the line in front of the plough,” reported the Echo.

“The snow was falling very fast at the time, and the plough in front partly obscured his view.”

The Echo’s report concluded: “A verdict that the deceased met his death by being accidentally knocked down by the snowplough was returned, and that there appeared to be no blame attached to anyone.”

In Cotherstone Methodist Chapel, where Mr Clarkson was a preacher and a Sunday School superintendent, there is a plaque in his memory.

■ With thanks to June Luckhurst of Ingleton, who is the great-granddaughter of Mr Clarkson.

WE think today that our MPs are a rum lot, but 160 years ago, both of South Durham’s MPs fled the country for fear that they would be served with writs for their chicanery on the racecourse.

Echo Memories has been looking at the railways of Teesdale recently, including the wonderful lost station of Broomielaw, which was built as a luxurious private halt for John Bowes of Streatlam Castle.

Following that article, Peter Fawcett pointed us in the direction of a new book, Gentlemen and Blackguards, by Nicholas Foulkes.

It tells of the vast interest in gambling in the 1840s and how the aristocratic owners, such as Bowes, resorted to great subterfuge to ensure they won.

Bowes was the illegitimate son of the 10th Earl of Strathmore.

In fact, his mother, Mary, was “a girl of humble extraction but great beauty and strength of character”

from the hamlet of Stainton.

She caught the eye of the Earl when she was employed to strip the bark off trees felled by the Streatlam woodsmen.

She and the Earl stripped their clothes off, and the result was Bowes.

When the Earl died in 1820, Bowes inherited the family stud at Streatlam.

“He cared little for the excitement of the turf,” said the Echo in 1885. “He seldom gambled, even to the extent of sixpence.”

In fact, said the paper, Bowes only kept the stud going out of “some sort of pious duty to preserve the old family tradition”.

You can’t always believe what you read in an obituary.

In 1832, after the Great Reform Act, South Durham elected its first two MPs.

Joseph Pease, of Darlington, topped the poll, with Bowes, also a Liberal, 700 votes behind in second place.

When Pease stood down in 1841, Harry Vane, the son of the Duke of Cleveland of Raby Castle, joined Bowes in representing South Durham.

In 1843, the two South Durham MPs became caught up in a betting scandal.

A few days before that year’s Derby, Bowes rushed to the London home of Sir William Gregory at “an unconscionably early hour of the morning”. He roused Sir William from his sleep and told him that he had just received news from the Streatlam stud that his horse, Cotherstone, was running so well that it was guaranteed to win the big race.

Before the news could leak out to the ordinary punters, Bowes had Sir William place £1,000 on the outsider Cotherstone.

Cotherstone romped home, and Sir William collected Bowes’ winnings of £21,000 – a staggering £2.5m in today’s values.

Such an outlandish victory increased the tension between the aristocratic horseowners, who fiddled the outcomes to make sure they won, and the working-class gamblers, who staked their wages in the smoky “hellhole” clubs of London and disliked paying debts accumulated in dodgy races.

Indeed, an “unholy gang of Hellkeepers” discovered a 140- year-old piece of obscure legislation that outlawed excessive gambling. It said anyone caught placing bets of more than £10 would have to pay treble their winnings as a penalty.

James Russell, the leader of the Hellkeepers, tried to serve a “qui tam” writ on Bowes demanding he cough up £7.5m.

When Russell couldn’t find Bowes in London, he travelled to Durham to try to catch his man.

Bowes, though, had fled to Paris to escape the law. His cogambler, Sir William, equally concerned, fled to Galway, in Ireland.

Harry Vane seems also to have been caught up. The new book says he too fled to France and, in an attempt to reassure Bowes, told him that his name “would not transpire or appear in my betting book at present except by an initial”.

The two South Durham MPs seem to have lain low for best part of a year until their friends in the House of Lords passed a new law wiping the “qui tam” legislation from the statute book. The coast was then clear for them to return.

Bowes used his winnings to pay off his debts, to invest in mining machinery and to buy property, including a theatre, in Paris. In fact, having stood down as MP, he moved to Paris in 1847 where he met an actress, Josephine Benoîte Coffin- Chevalier, the Countess of Montalbo. He bought her a chateau as a token of his affection.

They married and collected French art.

In 1860, they sold the chateau and headed for County Durham. Even though poor Josephine was terrified of the sight of water, they sailed over the Channel to London and then caught another boat up the coast with their precious cargo to Middlesbrough.

There it was loaded onto a train and taken through Darlington and on to Broomielaw.

At Broomielaw, the art treasures were hauled by horsedrawn carts to Streatlam for display. Now, of course, they hang in the Bowes Museum, at Barnard Castle.

BROOMIELAW station is now so utterly overgrown that you cannot see it, although its derelict signalbox stands forlornly in a nearby field. Once, though, it was one of the smartest stations in the North-East.

John Askwith, of the Weardale Railway, has sent in the results of British Rail’s North-East Best Kept Station Gardens competition. First prize won £5, second £4 and third £3.

1950 best kept station gardens 1st Westgate-in-Weardale 2nd Frosterley 3rd Witton-le-Wear, Broomielaw 1953 station gardens 1st Tow Law 2nd Broomielaw 3rd Eastgate 1954 station gardens 1st Winston 2nd Evenwood 3rd Broomielaw Until its closure in 1965, Broomielaw was regularly featuring in the awards. Who were the staff who kept it so spick and span?

■ Gentlemen and Blackguards.

Gambling Mania and the Plot to Steal the Derby of 1844, by Nicholas Foulkes (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £18.99).