Newton Aycliffe celebrates its 75th anniversary

Last year, Newton Aycliffe celebrated its 75th anniversary as it was in 1947 that Lewis Silkin, the Minister for Town and Country Planning, announced that this corner of south Durham would be among the first 10 new towns to be created, along with Stevenage, Harlow and Peterlee.

There was then a debate about what it should be called: Yackley (the ancient name for the area, meaning a clearing among the oaks), Newcliffe or Great Aycliffe?

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However, by April 19, 1947, when Silkin signed the “designation order” which lawfully brought the new towns into being, the name Newton Aycliffe had been decided upon.

This April day 76 years ago is considered by some to be Aycliffe’s true birthday. Also on that day, Lord William Beveridge, architect of the welfare state, was appointed as the first chairman of the Aycliffe Development Corporation.

Beveridge Way in December 1973. We think Lord Beveridge planted the oak tree - the symbol of Aycliffe - on the left in the town's earliest days, but it was lost in the pedestrianisation of the early 1970s

He was tasked with creating a “paradise for housewives”.

He said: "The corporation aims at making a town better than anything in the past, a town that will be an example for the future. We shall do our utmost to make a town both happy for its inhabitants and famous as an example to Britain and the world."

It was to be a green new town, with residents employed on the neighbouring industrial estate that was going to replace the munitions factory, and it was to be classless society, with manager living alongside mechanic. To complete this ideal for life, the Clarence Railway was to be reopened so the residents could go to the beach whenever they liked.

But nothing happened on the ground until June 28, 1948 – 75 years ago on Wednesday – when Cllr William Davis, vice-chair of the development corporation, ceremonially cut the first sod with a silver spade (above).

“It was a typical day in this capricious summer, but the sun broke through as Mr Davis in a few words asked a blessing on what was about to be done,” said a report to the corporation.

The site of the ceremony was where the first pre-fab house would be built at the corner of Clarence Green and Travellers Green

“The turf with its blades of grass and wild flowers was placed in a small oak box to be preserved as a record, and the spade was kept for the blade to be autographed by those who witnessed the ceremony,” said the report. “We then went to The Gretna for lunch where our host, Mr Chatwyn, opened up some of his champagne.”

And so Aycliffe had begun.

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And it is this 75th anniversary that is being celebrated on Sunday, July 2, 2023, from 1pm to 4pm in the Town Park with a fair featuring live music, dancing, rides, a magician and even a bubbleologist as well as community stands and stalls.

But the silver spade that turned that first sod 75 years ago (above) has featured in one of the strangest stories in all of Aycliffe’s ages.

The guests at the ceremony signed the spade’s blade and an engraver made their signatures permanent. The spade, and the locked casket, then became the first of Aycliffe’s crown jewels, and were put on display for the best part of 50 years.

In the mid 1990s, someone noticed they were missing. This coincided with the retirement after 27 years of Great Aycliffe Town Council’s chief officer, John Farquhar, in 1996. His departure became messy, he was questioned and bailed by police over “two items that cannot be accounted for” and then he was dismissed over allegations of gross misconduct.

Mr Farquhar was a magistrate, a member of Durham Police Authority, a football referee, the chairman of Aycliffe Operatic Society and the St John Ambulance Brigade. He said the allegations were “nonsense”.

He died in 2005, and in 2009 police had reason to search his family home in Houghton-le-Side for some unconnected “railway memorabilia”.

And there in the loft they found the spade and the casket.

The policeman, Detective Sergeant Sean Jackson (above), who formally handed over the retrieved items to the Mayor of Great Aycliffe, Mary Dalton, said: “Sorry it took us so long.”

They are now on display in the offices of the town council.

THERE is a second big 75th anniversary in Aycliffe this year, because it was on November 9, 1948, that Lord Beveridge handed over the keys of the first 41 pre-fabricated bungalows on Clarence Green built where that first sod had been turned.

Accepting the keys were the first residents of the new town, Don and Eve Perry, who had moved from Surrey so Don, a former army captain, could work at Crowborough Engineering. They chose to accept the keys to No 9 as it was the only one of the new-builds with a garage.

Perhaps we’ll look at that more closely in November so Newton Aycliffe can celebrate its 75th anniversary for a third time.

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The Gretna Green Wedding Inn at Aycliffe in the mid-Thirties

SO 75 years ago, after the ceremonially turning of the first sod of the new town, the officials went to the Gretna for a glass of champagne.

The Gretna Green Wedding Inn was probably the nearest building of any age to the scene of the sod cutting, as it had stood beside the Great North Road for several centuries, at a place known as Travellers Rest.

The inn was named in honour of John Scott, the 1st Earl of Eldon, who, on November 18, 1772, had eloped with Bessie Surtees from her family’s home on the Quayside in Newcastle and dashed off to Gretna Green, over the border in Scotland, to tie the knot despite her parents’ misgivings. Scott rose to become one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, as Lord Chancellor, and to own much of south Durham.

The Great North Road at Travellers Rest , near Newton Aycliffe , in the 1930s

Opposite the inn was a farm known as Travellers Rest, itself a sometime pub called the Bay Horse, and a few hundreds yard north was a short terrace of houses called High Travellers Rest. Near there were four properties called Tanyard Cottages, which had deep pits where animal hides were steeped in urine as part of the tanning process.

All of these properties were cleared in the mid 1930s to enable the Great North Road – now the A167 – to be widened, perhaps in readiness for the construction of the munitions factory.

The Gretna Green was rebuilt, and it was to there that the sod-cutters retired in that capricious summer 75 years ago.

• With thanks to Amanda Donald.

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Ladies shopping with their prams in Newton Aycliffe in March 1967. You don't get many proper prams these days

The new town of Newton Aycliffe in November 1963