PERHAPS legendary highwayman Dick Turpin really did stay at the Baydale Beck Inn on the western edge of Darlington.

The inn was once the haunt of thieves and disreputable types – the gang leader, William Brown, was hanged at Westgate in Newcastle on August 8, 1743, after he had returned from being transported for breaking into a barn – and Turpin himself was said to have had a room with five doors before his capture in 1738.

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Memories 702 poo-poo’d this oft-repeated story because the majority of Turpin’s crimes were committed in Essex, Lincolnshire, London and the East Riding, so he would have been well off his patch if he laid low at Baydale Beck, even if the five-doored room would have been attractive to someone in need of making a quick escape.

But Ian Waller, formerly of the estate agents Dollery Waller, remembers that in the 1980s he sold a house in the village of Ingleton, a handful of miles from the inn, which was also a hang-out for Turpin.

Ingleton, just down the road from the Baydale BeckHe’s right. In 1972, the Northern Despatch – the Echo’s former evening sister paper – told how in the 1730s, Turpin had not just stayed the night in a property called Oaklea, but he had taken his horse up to bed with him.

This sounds a little strange, but, as Turpin would have known, the area was full of people who couldn’t be trusted and would have had your horse away as you slept.

The property in Ingleton where Dick Turpin, and his horse, stayed the nightSo if the legendary highwayman was in Ingleton there is no reason why he shouldn’t have been in a five-doored room at the Baydale Beck.

John Theakston, master butcher and owner of the Baydale Beck InnThe Ingleton story stuck with Ian because his great-great-great-uncle, John Theakston, had bought the Baydale Beck in 1870, when it was a “popular eating place of the young sprigs of Darlington who enjoyed the Scotch oat cakes and whiskey served by the landlady, Mrs Anne Nesbitt”.

John, a master butcher of Northgate, died in 1880 and left the pub in a trust for his family, but it fell into such disrepair that in 1910, the town magistrates told the trustees they inn would lose its licence unless something was done.

The Baydale Beck in 1910 before it was demolishedConsequently, in 1911, they sold it to solicitor Thomas Clayhills, who owned the South Durham Brewery in Haughton Road, and he knocked it down and rebuilt it so that the A67 could be widened.

The Baydale Beck, rebuilt in 1911However, the trust kept the land around the pub, and by 1937 it was in the ownership of John’s grandson, Alfred Theakston. He fell on such hard times in London that he had to return to Darlington to sell the land. As he couldn’t afford motorised transport, he set out on Boxing Day to walk via Oxford, Coventry, Leicester and Derby.

At Ripon, a chap who gave him a lift asked: “Are you a professional tramp.”

Alfred replied with a smile: “I certainly am a tramp but I feel it is a rather disconcerting question to ask a landowner.”

Ian says: “We presume he sold the Baydale land and invested the proceeds wisely.”

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Preparing the A67 to go over the Al, on January 20, 1962, outside the Baydale Beck InnTHE A1 was numbered in 1921, and it took traffic from Scotch Corner through Barton and Blackwell and into Darlington. As early as 1929, this was recognised as impractical, but it took more than 30 years for work to begin on the A1 Darlington by-pass.

This involved converting the old Merrybent mineral railway line into a motorway which ran around the western side of Darlington to Coatham Mundeville.

Memories 702 showed a picture of the A67 Darlington to Barnard Castle road being widened outside the Baydale Beck Inn as part of the by-pass project (above).

“The road widening was undertaken in 1961 in advance of the construction of the A1m by-pass, along with the building of the Tees Bridge (Low Coniscliffe), Barnard Castle Railway Bridge (Branksome) and Bishop Auckland Railway Bridge (near Whiley Hill),” says Dave Middlemass, who lived at Merrybent.

“Curiously, this was well in advance of the final motorway route being formalised and Transport Minister Ernest Marples didn’t officially cut the first sod until May 1963 by which time these larger bridges were all completed.

“Work on the A67 Merrybent bridge near the Baydale Beck also started early due to the foreseen difficulties in lowering the existing major Tees Valley water main under the new motorway. The main had previously bridged over the narrow railway cutting but now it had to be sunk deep under the new 200ft wide motorway cutting.”

Looking north in the early 1960s from Low Coniscliffe as the A1 Darlington by-pass is built beside a bridge from the Merrybent railway, which was about to be demolishedThe water main still runs beneath the A67. In 2013, a landslip on the high stretch of the road between High Coniscliffe and Carlbury caused it to be closed for many months as the high pressure pipeline beneath the surface was endangered.

“In the early 1960s, the work widened and straightened the A67, along with three miles of other realigned roads which crossed the new motorway via 10 new bridges along its 12 miles (not including farm bridges),” says Dave. “This stretch of motorway opened in May 1965.”

One of the casualties of the A67 road widening was a village hall which stood beside the Baydale Beck and Merrybent. A lay-by, often occupied by a popular food wagon, now occupies its spot.

“The hall only shows on post war maps until the 1960s when it disappears,” says Dave. “I wonder if it was a temporary timber structure, maybe recycled from elsewhere as was often the case after the war.”

Can anyone tell us about this lost village hall?

“Ironically,” finishes Dave, “when the Branksome bridge went over the Barnard Castle railway in 1961, the line was still in full operation. By the time the motorway opened four years later, the line had fully closed to passengers, thanks to the same Ernest Marples, and served only sporadic limestone traffic from Forcett quarry for a few months before the track under the bridge was finally lifted. Such is progress.”

The White Cross milepost that used to stand on the A67FEEDING our obsession with mileposts, Hugh Mortimer sends a photograph of one he came across one in Beamish museum. It says “Barnard Castle 10 Darlington 6” on it and so it had once resided beside the A67 down the road from the Baydale Beck.

The milepost dates from the 1880s when the newly formed Durham County Council took control of the roads and replaced 100-year-old milestones with metal posts.

If we head west out of Darlington on the A67, a similar post can be spotted in Merrybent (BC 13/D3).

The next post in the sequence is at the eastern entrance to High Coniscliffe, but unfortunately it is completely covered in brambles and so is invisible.

Both of these posts are Grade II listed buildings.

A mile further west at Carlbury, there was a post directly above the River Tees but it mysteriously disappeared about 20 years ago.

Then the road drops down to Piercebridge, and the next post would have been the one Hugh has spotted at Beamish, presumably moved there when the road was altered.

It stood near the gateway to White Cross Farm, a good looking farm from the 18th Century where practically every railing and out-building is Grade II listed, including its “gin-gan”.

A gin-gan is a horse engine – also, perhaps, known as a “jenny ring”.

We think this is an old horse engine at Neasham Hill  (Image: Chris Lloyd) It is a rounded building, often octagonal, in which teams of up to six horses were pressed to work, constantly walking around, turning a beam which spun a belt which provided power for machinery on the other side of the wall: a threshing machine, a chaff-cutter or a turnip-cutter.

This technology came to the North East in the 1790s, and, although it was superseded by steam, it lasted until the outbreak of the First World War.

There are lots of old gin-gans in our area, nearly as many as there are mileposts. Many, despite their distinctive shapes, are just used as out-buildings but some have been converted into conservatories.

Do you know of an old gin-gan? Can you send us a picture of one? Is there one that still has some of its horse-powered machinery?

White Cross Farm is even more interesting because just west of its gate once stood a white cross, which was on the boundary between Piercebridge and Gainford and thus between Darlington and Durham. The White Cross itself seems to have disappeared several centuries ago but it has given its name to a farm with a gin-gan and a milepost.