AN expert said last night that George Mallory successfully conquered Everest during his ill-fated climb in 1924, in which he was joined part of the way by a North-East man.

Former Barnard Castle School student and teacher Bentley Beetham was a member of George Mallory's party that set out to reach the summit in June 1924, three decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing conquered the world's highest mountain.

Beetham was forced to withdraw from the climb, having been plagued with dysentery and sciatica, leaving Mallory and Andrew Irvine to tackle the remainder of the mountain.

It has been widely accepted that Mallory and Irvine only just failed to reach the summit -their bodies were found 75 years later a few hundred feet from the top.

But yesterday, a mountaineering expert said Mallory and Irvine reached the summit and were, in fact, on their way down the mountain when they died.

Graham Hoyland has spent years investigating a story that was told to him as a child, and last night presented his findings to the Royal Geographical Society, in London.

His theory is that the pair took a different route to what was previously thought, and that witness accounts from the expedition were inaccurate.

But mountaineer Alan Hinkes, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, who climbed Everest in 1996, said Mr Hoyland's argument was flawed.

Mr Hinkes, who took the same route as the doomed pair, said: "There is every chance that Mallory and Irvine made it to the top, but they did not get down, so that is not a successful climb as far as I am concerned. It is a round trip. You need to get back.

"Graham can put a lot of evidence together, but until you have got a picture of them at the summit, we will never know."

Bentley Beetham was at Barnard Castle School as a pupil until 1903. He returned to teach in 1914, staying until 1949. Although he never made his mark on the history of Mount Everest, he is credited with taking some valuable early pictures of the expeditions.

Following Everest, Beetham continued to climb mountains around the world, but never regained his health after a serious fall while climbing in Britain. He died in 1963.

Mr Hinkes said: "He did a lot of first ascents in the Lake District area and was still quite an influential rock climber in the Forties and Fifties."