A MESSAGE from beyond the grave caused the ornamental lake in Darlington's South Park to be drained 70 years ago.

Yesterday, the lake was drained for what is believed to be the first time since 1934 when a water diviner claimed that a body might be in it.

For all its elements of intrigue, this is a sad story that starts on October 25, 1934, with the disappearance of a 48-year-old chimneysweep Joseph Jackson Middleton. He walked out of his home in Swan Street and never came back leaving his wife and four children anxiously awaiting news and worrying about the "severe pains in his head" that he had suffered for about 15 years.

The tragic story took its strange turn a month later when "a Darlington woman who claims spiritualistic powers" approached the family.

"She said that she had received a message from him that his body was lodged against a pillar of a bridge by South Park," reported the Northern Despatch, the local evening paper, on its front page. "The woman claimed that previous messages she had received about other drowned people had been proved correct."

The council and the police immediately investigated around the Geneva Road bridge (now called the Parkside bridge). They dragged the large boating lake that, as past Echo Memories have told, was to the south of the bridge.

Nothing was found.

A week later, at the beginning of December, a water diviner from Richmond arrived in the park. His name was R Brotton, and he may have been related by marriage to the Middletons.

"Mr Brotton affirmed that the body was not in the river or the boating lake," reported The Northern Echo, "but the twig he used indicated that it was somewhere in the direction of the ornamental lake."

Mr Brotton advised that dragging the lake would be unsuccessful because the body was in the mud at the bottom.

So Darlington council proceeded to drain the lake. One wonders what the council reaction would be today if a chap brandishing a twig demanded the emptying of the lake.

Echo Memories understands that one of Mr Middleton's children slipped out of the house, contrary to her mother's wishes, to watch the operation.

On her return, she was given a good hiding - not for disobeying her mother, but for lying about where she had been.

"The ornamental lake in South Park was drained yesterday," reported the Echo on November 4. "There was no sign of a body among the weeds and slime."

The ornamental lake was refilled. A week later, following heavy rainfall, a body was discovered tangled in overhanging branches at Bowe Hole, on the River Tees at Newsham, near Yarm. A fishing licence in a pocket showed it to be that of Mr Middleton.

An inquest was held the following day, December 11, at the Railway Hotel in Eaglescliffe.

William Brotton, brother-in-law, said of the deceased: "I only know that ever since the end of the war he has been a different man physically and during the latter end he had been mentally depressed and had severe pain in the head."

On a couple of occasions he had wished himself dead, said the witness.

A verdict of "found drowned" was announced by the coroner, who couldn't be convinced that Mr Middleton had taken his own life.

Of course, the location of the body in the Tees does mean that the woman "who claims spiritualistic powers" could have been correct when she saw it lodged against a bridge on the Skerne, a tributary of the Tees.

Published: ??/??/2004

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.