Family tree on lost Tudhoe pit emblem

More than 80 years on, Pip’s front page cartoon is still as meaningful as ever. The old year, gnarled and ragged and surrounded by dreadful storms is prodding William Glubb – the archetypal Darlingtonian – through the puddles towards the new year.

MR Glubb is blindfolded. He cannot see the future. He cannot see round the corner where the featureless new baby is waiting for him.

“Narthen, young feller,” says the commentator to the baby.

“Let’s ave a bit o’summat different from you.”

Pip drew his cartoon for the Northern Despatch – the Echo’s now defunct evening sister paper – to commemorate the end of the economicallychallenged year of 1927.

Today, after the economic storm of 2011 which has left its puddles lapping at our feet, we must all hope for “ a bit o’ summat different” from 2012.

But thanks to everybody who has read Echo Memories in 2011, and we are especially grateful to everybody who has contributed. There is a long list of material – your material – waiting to be published.

Harperley and swimming are coming up – in fact, we’d like to make as big big a splash in the New Year as Jack Hatfield did in the pool in the 1912 Family tree on lost Looking forward to the year ahead and many more readers’ recollections IN ASSOCIATION WITH Olympics, which we hope to tell about next week.

COLLIERY banners were the miners’ equivalent of the standard or colours in a battle. Like soldiers, miners marched behind the banners at the Big Meeting, and the designs on the banners were like a proud rallying cry proclaiming their values and heroes.

They showed regional union leaders and national socialist politicians. They spoke of justice and were covered in socialist slogans. They depicted men shaking hands, or the union’s convalescent home or Durham Cathedral – the focal point of the coalfield.

Tudhoe Colliery seems to have been unusual, though, in portraying a couple of its local union officials, and fragments of faces still remain.

“I remember being at the Gala in Durham in the Thirties when I was a schoolboy, and seeing my grandfather on the banner,” says Raymond Blenkin, of Hamsterley.

Tudhoe Colliery was sunk in 1864, and the banner its men carried at the 1872 Gala showed a coalowner shaking hands with a miner, and the motto: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a Master.”

In 1873, this banner was described as fading, and its replacement seems to have borne a portrait of Raymond’s grandfather, William Blenkin. He “rendered yeoman” service as lodge treasurer, and must have been extremely highly thought of to get his face on a banner.

When the banner wore out, the family acquired William’s portrait.

“I remember seeing the banner in the front room of their colliery house in Low Spennymoor,” says Raymond. “It dominated the room.”

That banner appears to have been replaced by one which depicted William’s son, Anthony – a possibly unique double honour for the family.

Anthony was lodge secretary for 15 years and, in 1898, was one of the first three Labour representatives elected to Spennymoor Urban District Council. He held his seat for 30 years, and when he died in 1946, his obituary referred to him as “Spennymoor’s Grand Old Man”.

Collieries changed banners on a regular basis – in the Fifties, renowned local artist Norman Cornish produced one for Tudhoe showing a Gala day scene with crowds and banners on Durham Racecourse.

And so the old banners either got cut up or thrown away. For instance, the banner that was replaced by Mr Cornish’s design was lost for years only to be found on a scrap dealer’s cart and bought back for £5.

It was last heard of in Witton Park Environmental Studies Centre, but has now, once again, disappeared.

If you know of its whereabouts, or if you have banner fragments to show or banner stories to tell, we would love to hear from you.

LEO RADLEY of Newton Aycliffe was one of many people who identified the old Eldon charabanc in Memories 60. He had better reason than most because the picture featured his grandfather, Thomas Radley, who was killed in the First World War.

Thomas died on July 7, 1918, and is buried in Barenthal Cemetery in north-east Italy.

He was in the Durham Light Infantry, and it is likely that he perished during the Battle of Asiago in which Italian, French and British troops tried to push the Austro-Hungarian enemy out of the mountainous north of Italy.

It was one of the last major battles of the First World War with huge numbers of victims: each side had about 12,000 men killed, with about ten times as many casualties.

Poor Thomas, 28, was one of those, leaving his wife, Mary, pregnant at home in Paddy’s Row, Eldon Lane, with Leo’s father.

Thomas’ brother, Charlie, continued to run Radley’s buses into the Fifties when he sold up and moved to Skeeby.

Keith Jennison, of High Etherley, remembers catching a Radley bus.

“Saturday was a very busy day and the bus from Bishop Auckland was always full and certainly overcrowded,” he says. “The conductor had quite a job to collect fares as Charlie’s motto was ‘leave no one behind’.”

DENE Valley historian Colin Turner says that Charlie Radley garaged his buses on the High Street, Eldon Lane, in what was also known as Clark’s Garage. The Clark brothers ran buses to Hartlepool from 1925 until they, too, sold out to United in the Fifties.

The garage wasn’t, though, a garage. It was originally a cinema.

“It was started in 1909 by a photographer from Saltburn who married a local girl, but died about five years later,” says Colin.

“I wonder, does anyone have his photo collection?”

Echo Memories last mentioned this cinema/garage in 2000 when we were told that it collapsed in January 1984 under a weight of snow.

The collapse, though, revealed to the world the old silver screen still stuck on the back wall with the pianist’s pit in front of it.

THOMAS RADLEY wasn’t the only Eldon busman to die in the First World War. Colin Turner sends a picture of a United pre-war bus which has A Blanchard, of Close House, at the front, smoking a cigarette. He is believed to have died at The Front in 1914.

The Hubery brothers, Henry and John, also ran buses in the Dene Valley. They died within six months of each other on the Somme in 1916. Henry, 33, left a widow in West Row, Eldon.

We’d be very interested in hearing of Huberys and Blanchards.