Duel in a ditch that settled tower’s title

Ludworth Tower does not look like much of a tower. In a field full of bumps, there’s a bit of an arch and slightly more of a wall – not the sort of place you would die in a duel in a ditch to get your hands on.

ECHO Memories was in the Ludworth area last week, looking at how mines transformed its rural nature in the mid-19th Century so that, 100 years later, there were nearly 4,000 men working underground.

But it would be wrong to think there was no history before the Industrial Revolution.

Even the names of the villages are ancient. Thornley was once a hill with a thorntree on it, and Ludworth was once an enclosure owned by a Saxon chap called Luda.

Most interesting is Wheatley Hill, which you would expect to be the hill of wheat.

However, those who know about names say that it was originally Whitely Hill, apparently because the hill was often seen covered with a white hoar frost.

The remains of Ludworth Tower to the west of the village are almost as old.

In 1411, the Holden family acquired a manor house from the de Ludworth family, and in 1422 Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, granted Thomas Holden a licence to crenellate the manor. This allowed him to put battlements on it and turn it into a fortified peel tower.

Peel towers were built in the 15th Century along the Scottish border to keep watch on the potential invaders. Each tower had to have a beacon at its top which could be lit if invaders were spotted.

Peel towers are rare as far south as County Durham.

Roger Thornton, a selfmade merchant in Newcastle, acquired the tower from the Holdens. In 1453, his daughter and heir, Elizabeth, married Sir George Lumley, of Lumley Castle, and its ownership changed.

However, Elizabeth’s illegitimate half-brother, Giles, disputed Sir George’s claim to the tower and challenged him to a duel. But it was Sir George’s oldest son, Sir Thomas, who arrived in a ditch which surrounded Windsor Castle to duel to the death.

Giles lost and was killed; Sir Thomas married Elizabeth Plantagenet, the daughter of King Edward IV, and Sir George kept hold of Ludworth Tower.

Time, though, has not been kind to the tower, and it suffered a major collapse in 1890 so that it is now in enigmatic ruins, surrounded by a field of lumps which are the remains of the Mediaeval village that once serviced it.

􀁥 When Sir George married Elizabeth in 1453, as well as Ludworth Tower, he also gained “the Isle, Co Durham”

– presumably the prehistoric lake near Sedgefield we have been looking at recently in Memories, which is the proposed site of the Isles windfarm.

ALL dictionaries of place names explain that Aycliffe is “the clearing in the oak forest” – “ac” is oak and “lea” is clearing (Memories 48). Some sources also throw “clif” into the meaning so that the clearing in the oak forest is on some form of high land.

David Blair, of Aycliffe Village, has a theory which shatters this cosy tree-lined consensus.

“I was told by an old Aycliffe chap, now long since deceased, that the church at Aycliffe, now St Andrew’s, was once dedicated to St Acca,” he says.

Acca was born in the 7th Century in Northumbria – which then covered the whole of the North-East. He fell in with Wilfred who, based at Hexham Abbey where the parish church is also dedicated to St Andrew, was one of the greatest religious leaders of his day.

When Wilfrid died around 709, Acca succeeded him as Bishop of Hexham and carried on his influential work.

Acca encouraged learning and was a patron of Bede, the great ancient chronicler.

A decade before his death, Acca fell out with the Northumbrian king and went to live in exile in Ireland on a remote coast. Shortly before he died, he returned to Hexham where he was greeted warmly.

He died in about 740, and was probably made a saint in the 11th Century. He was said to have performed miracles, and when his body was moved about 400 years after his death, his vestments were found to be untouched by the passing of time.

Says David: “It doesn’t take much imagination to link Acca to Aycliffe. Was this his family seat?”

MEMORIES 46 celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Saltburn with pictures of the landmarks of Henry Pease’s seaside resort. One landmark was missing: the water tower that was built on the highest land on the top of the cliff.

From the very first days of 1861, the new resort had problems with its sanitary arrangements. Sewage was sent slooshing out of the houses onto the beach, much to the consternation of those living near the Ship Inn at Old Saltburn, who found it washing up on their doorsteps.

The problem wasn’t taken seriously until 1865 when there were outbreaks of cattle plague and typhoid. These were bad news for the local inhabitants, and even worse news for the distant investors who were expecting visitors to come from far and wide to repay their investment.

In 1865, the Saltburn Improvement Company built the water tower behind the Emmanuel church. It was filled with water pumped up from the Skelton Beck in the valley below.

The tower looks to have been a splendid Gothic building, with contrasting bricks and wrought iron balconies – perhaps it was designed by one of the Darlington architects, John Ross or William Peachey, who were working in Saltburn at the time.

Just the sight of the impressive tower must have reassured the visitors. In 1866, there were 6,000 of them. All the lodging houses in the “jewel” streets – the first seven streets closest to the cliff edge were named after jewels – were full.

It is ironic that only last week it was announced that vast sums of money are to be spent cleaning up the orange beck, Saltburn Gill, that brings pollution from ironstone mines into Skelton Beck. Because within a couple of years of the tower being built, it was discovered that the water in Skelton Beck was contaminated. A fresh supply was found, and the tower was rendered redundant.

It passed into the hands of the North Eastern Railway, who allowed the station porter, David Donaldson, to live in it with his wife, Ann, four children and dog.

“They must have felt very grand,” says Kath Cheadle, of Darlington, who is the greatgreat- grand-daughter of Mr Donaldson.

He came from Forfar; Ann came from Brompton, near Northallerton.

On the ground floor of the tower, Ann ran a sweetshop and a café.

The railway company sold the tower to a private developer named Imeson, and he demolished it in 1905. He cleaned each of the lightcoloured bricks and built four houses nearby in Upleatham Street. He called the houses Water Tower Terrace, and they still stand, even if the landmark does not.

WHEN Robert Baden Powell formed the Scout movement in 1907, he asked William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, if he would join the world governing body.

Booth declined. Instead, in 1913 he formed his own version for young male salvationists, called the Life Saving Scout Movement. In 1915, his wife, Catherine, formed a female equivalent called the Life Saving Guards.

Alan Dodd, of Manfield, has just found a picture of his late aunt, Margaret Glasper, in the grey-and-red uniform of the guards.

A newspaper article with the picture, dated about 1920, says: “Darlington holds the distinction of possessing the first and, up to the present, the only Troop of Life Saving Guards in the Tees Division.”

Today, we might think that Life Saving Guards would pull people in danger of drowning out of rivers or swimming pools. At the time of the First World War, the Life Saving Guards were young evangelists, on a mission to save souls.

The article gives a hint of the good works of the girls, who were led by Commandant Ord. It says: “Every Saturday, they go visiting the workhouse, hospital, sick comrades and old people, taking with them fruit and flowers, which they buy and pay for themselves.”

Later, there were junior branches of the life savers: for young boys, the Chum Brigade; for young girls, the Sunbeams.

In 1948, the Life Saving Scouts were amalgamated with the Boy Scout Association, and in 1959, the Life Saving Guards amalgamated with the Girl Guide Association.

Margaret Glasper died five years ago aged 99. She was born in Darlington but came from a Hexham family. By coincidence, her grandfather was a stonemason at the abbey where St Acca – of Aycliffe?

– worked for so many years.

In fact, one stormy night, her grandfather was called out to carry out emergency repairs on the belltower, and he fell to his death.