ONE of the biggest news of recent days has been the landing in Bowburn of a bright red Virgin hot air balloon. It was not that the balloon came down – after all, what goes up must always come down – but it was that it landed on Tail-upon-end Lane – surely a made-up name?
READ THE STORY: HOT AIR BALLOON LANDS ON BOWBURN
But no, it is actually an ancient name. It is marked on late Victorian Ordnance Survey maps running through fields and its path has become the modern boundary of Bowburn leaving the fields to the north of Whitwell South Farm untouched by development.
On a map of Whitwell Colliery, which was abandoned in 1884, that farm is referred to simply as “Tail Upon End”.
There are theories that connect Tail-upon-end to horse racing, and from 1895 to 1914, a little to the east there was Shincliffe racecourse which staged the “North Durham and Shincliffe Steeplechases”, but the name pre-dates that.
Mike Syer, of Bowburn Local History Society, throws in another theory. “Tail-upon-end Lane runs along the watershed between Bowburn Beck and Whitwell Beck,” he says. “As such, it could be seen as a “tail” from the limestone heugh that extends north-west between Cassop vale and the vale below Quarrington Hill.
"This tail therefore connects those hills (and the settlements upon them – especially, perhaps, Kelloe) with Shincliffe and thence Durham. Just a thought…”
MEMORIES 644 told of the day a shop – Mothercare – fell down in Bishop Auckland’s Newgate Street in 2012. The gaping hole it left has remained ever since, while dereliction has grown around it, but now it is going to be replaced by STACK, which will be two floors of street food, cocktails and live music.
STACK is also utilising the building to the north of the gap, which Memories 644 identified as the 1930 art deco extension of Doggarts, the legendary North East department store, which fronted onto the Market Place.
Barbara Laurie draws our attention to a picture we published in 2000 showing Newgate Street in 1978, two years before Doggarts closed. It shows the full extent of Doggarts expansion into Newgate Street because as well as the STACK building, they occupied the collapsed Mothercare building and also had a cafeteria in the neighbouring shop which has most recently been occupied by a phone company and by Top Shop.
Doggarts must have been huge in its heyday – does anyone remember shopping there?
READ MORE: THE HISTORY BEHIND NEWGATE STREET'S NEW KINGSWAY QUARTER
THE 50-BED HOTEL ON THE EDGE OF THE KINGSWAY QUARTERS
CLAIRMONT: THE STORY BEHIND A DERELICT BUILDING
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