Romans & railways: treasures found in the construction of the East Coast Main Line

Northallerton’s railway story is strangely complex with three lines converging on the town at different levels which created curious oddities, like a station that was used for passengers for just four years and a unique bridge on wheels.

It also raises the important question: when is a tunnel a tunnel and not a long bridge?

Perhaps the railway’s worst crime was at the very start when, in 1838 as the first stretch of mainline between York and Darlington was being built, it bulldozed through Castle Hills on the west side of town.

Castle Hills was a large mound of uncertain provenance. It may have been manmade; it may have been natural. The Romans may have used it, perhaps as a beacon; William the Conqueror probably did use it, in 1068, as a fortification – with the Sun and Willow becks running at its feet, it had a natural moat.

It then became a motte and bailey stronghold for the Bishop of Durham, as he ruled the north of England on behalf of the king, until 1174 when it was one of 20 castles that Henry II ordered to be destroyed as, in his eyes, it was unauthorised – he’d just spent 18 months crushing a rebellion organised by his sons and his own wife.

The bishop built a grand, moated palace beside the remains of the mound, but, over the centuries, it gradually fell down, and in the 1850s, the cemetery was laid out on its grounds.

Still, something of the mound must have survived when the railways arrived because 252,641 cubic yards of soil was taken from it and used to create the embankment on which the raised line still runs around the town.

A Roman sarcophagus in Darlington's West Cemetery - it is said to have come from Castle Hills, Northallerton, when the mainline was built in 1838

As the navvies – who were so hard drinking and riotous, Northallerton jail was said to be overflowing with miscreants – ploughed through the mound, Roman treasures tumbled out of it: coins, a 6th Legion votive altar (now disappeared) and at least two sarcophaguses. These were taken to Hurworth, which was effectively the builders’ yard at the head of the line, and seem to have been shared among the principal investors: the Peases’ sarcophagus is now near the car park in Darlington’s West Cemetery while the Backhouses’ sarcophagus is now in the grounds of the Rockliffe Hall hotel at Hurworth.

(This sarcophagus is said to have inspired Rudyard Kipling, who apparently stayed at Hurworth Grange in the 1890s, to write The Roman Centurion’s Song which is a lament by a soldier who grew up in the warmth and comfort of Rome but got left to die in the frozen uncivilised north when his legion went home.)

Another piece of drama occurred at Castle Hills on July 18, 1838, when a newly built bridge over Willow Beck collapsed with no one near it.

It was rebuilt and ready for the opening on January 4, 1841, by which time Northallerton also had a station, designed by Benjamin and John Green, of Newcastle. They were also responsible for Grey’s Monument in Newcastle, Penshaw Monument, near Chester-le-Street, plus Whorlton suspension bridge over the River Tees and nearby East Cowton station.

With George Hudson, “the Railway King”, of York, Northallerton quickly got a second line, with the Wensleydale Railway leaving the main line at Castle Hill Junction and heading towards Bedale on March 6, 1848.

Then a rival company, the Leeds Northern Railway, came to Northallerton. It was joining Leeds in the south-west with Yarm, Stockton and Hartlepool in the north-east which meant it had to cross the mainline. It did this by arriving from Ripon in the south-west at a lower level, running past the high level station and then burrowing beneath the mainline in a 160ft tunnel – which, amazingly, was built quite safely while trains were running on the mainline above it.

The Leeds Northern Railway opened on June 7, 1852, and had its own Northallerton Town station beside the level crossing at the north end of town.

Northallerton Town Station, used for only four years for passengers in the 1850s, stands beside the north level crossing today. Picture: Hannah Chapman

For a couple of years, the two rival railways offered local people cut price fares to attract them onto their tracks. However, in 1854, the companies merged to form the North Eastern Railway, and the price war stopped. Northallerton Town Station also stopped handling passengers and became a goods station, while low level platforms were built at the original station to accommodate passengers for Ripon, Harrogate and Leeds.

Over the years, the split level nature of Northallerton’s railways made each generation try to reconfigure them in a more sensible fashion. In the 1930s, at the south end of town, another tunnel – Longlands Tunnel – was built so that trains heading south from Teesside could easily join the mainline. This tunnel featured on a mystery picture (below) in Memories 538 where is location was identified by Andrew Bower, Richard Barber, Thomas Campion and Eddie Scarlett, among others.

Longlands Tunnel is controversial in that it is just 55 yards long – so not very long at all. Some sources refer to it as a “tunnel” while others dismissively call it a “long bridge”.

Perhaps the most strange reconfiguration came during the Second World War when it was feared that Northallerton station, with three lines converging on it, would become a target for German bombers. So a contingency plan, called the “Avoiding Line”, was built so that trains could bypass the station should it ever be struck and the mainline blocked. This entailed all trains being sent down onto the low level line which was extended to run beneath the Wensleydale Railway before rejoining the mainline.

However, the Avoiding Line could only go beneath the Wensleydale Railway on a bridge that was too low for a train to get under. So the idea seems to have been that in the case of emergency, the low bridge would have been quickly demolished so that mainline trains could use the Avoiding Line, and a unique wheeled bridge was built in two halves, and stored in nearby sidings, so that it could be rolled together whenever a train on the Wensleydale Railway needed to cross the void.

Perhaps fortunately, Northallerton station was never struck and these emergency measures were never needed.

A parcels train derailment in Northallerton station in February 1961 caused the day's newspapers to be shredded, creating a snowstorm of news which covered the platforms

In peacetime, rationalisation began: the Wensleydale Railway, losing £14,000-a-year, closed to passengers in 1954 (although it now operates as a heritage line).

The line from Harrogate and Ripon was closed by Beeching on March 6, 1967 (although it is now competing with 195 other projects for money from the Government’s Restoring Your Railways scheme).

The decaying Northallerton station, built by the Greens in the late 1830s, in 1986 just before it was demolished

With fewer passengers using it, Northallerton station was allowed to decay and it was demolished in 1986 to be replaced by the current modern building (although Northallerton Town station still stands and is a kitchen and bathroom showroom).

But at least the level crossings survive, reminding car drivers, as they sit behind the red lights, that there are still trains running on the tracks as there have been for 180 years.

The removal of the track on the line from Harrogate, with Longlands "tunnel" in the background. Picture courtesy of the JW Armstrong Trust

At the front of our “mystery” picture in Memories 538 was a giveway milepost – well, quarter-of-a-milepost, actually, which Richard Barber has in his garden in Darlington. Railways were precisely measured from their starting points, with the low level Leeds Northern Railway starting at Wortley Junction at Leeds. The junction to the south of Northallerton, near Longlands “tunnel” and beside the Boroughbridge Road level crossing, was 42-and-a-quarter miles from Wortley Junction – as the quarter-of-a-milepost showed