WOOD built and fuelled the early centuries of the British Empire. Nothing moved unless it was made of wood and, if it did not have a horse attached to it, unless it was burning wood.

As the empire stretched around the globe, so Britain's wood was thrown into battle around the world. By the early years of the 17th Century, there were signs that Britain was running short of timber.

In Spain, assembling the Armada in the late-16th Century had deforested much of the north of the country. Then came decades of almost continual war: The Nine Years War (1689-97), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), the War of Jenkins' Ear, which grew into the War of the Austrian Succession (1739-48), the Seven Years War (1756-63) and the American War of Independence (1776-83).

Britain's initial response to the timber shortage was to import, first from the Baltics and Scandinavia, and then from the North American colonies.

It also started experimenting with an inferior fuel called coal, which would have a dramatic impact on County Durham early in the 19th Century.

To encourage landowners to plant more trees so that future generations might not be so short of timber, the National Society of Arts began awarding medals for aforestation from the middle of the 18th Century.

(The National Society is now known as the Royal Society of Arts and is celebrating its 250th anniversary. It was not formed simply to promote arty things such as painting, but "to embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine arts, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce".)

Somewhat surprisingly, given their pacifist inclinations, the Backhouse family of Quaker bankers from Darlington won several medals in 1813 for planting trees.

Perhaps the Backhouses were inspired by their love of nature, or perhaps they were encouraged by the enticement of Government grants.

Jonathan Backhouse (1779 to 1842), of Polam Hall, received a silver medal for planting 271,000 larches.

His brother, William (1779 to 1844), of Field House, near Darlington, received a gold award for planting 300,000 larches and 50,000 other types of trees on the family estates between Hamsterley and Wolsingham.

Many trees dating from the medal period still stand - although this spring's high winds have caused one 200-year-old beech to tumble across the road to Dryderdale, exposing its rings to anyone with the time to count them.

There were two main houses on these remote Backhouse estates: St John's and Shull. St John's, closest to Wolsingham, has recently been restored and is, apparently, owned by gentlemen of Middle Eastern extraction.

Shull - "a picturesque dowager house in the Swedish style" - still stands, although it is no longer the main house on its estate. In 1872, William's cousin, Alfred (1822 to 1888), built, nearby, a seven-bedroomed mansion, which he called Dryderdale.

As Echo Memories reported a few weeks ago, Alfred was a tree-lover. He was especially fond of sequoia gigantea - giant redwood.

In 1863, he gave two to Darlington to plant in South Park to celebrate the wedding of the future king, and he decorated his grounds at Rockliffe Park, Hurworth, with them - trees Middlesbrough FC's players pass on their way into training today.

At Dryderdale, Alfred planted an avenue of redwoods leading from the lodge to the hall - their heads can be seen from the roadside, nodding above the tops of all the smaller trees in the forest.

Multi-millionaire Alfred, who married a Barclay, died without children at Dryderdale in 1888. Earlier in the day, he had been out walking the woods with his kinsman and neighbour, CJ Backhouse, of St John's.

The Backhouse family tree has many branches that interweave and overlap, entwining many other family names as they grow.

So, by the 1950s, we find the last of the Backhouses in residence: Elspeth Hodgkin in Dryderdale, and Mabel Mounsey in Shull.

With no need for Dryderdale's 319 acres of medal-winning trees, they sold it to the Forestry Commission so that the Dryderdale Plantation became part of Hamsterley Forest, but kept 19 acres back.

As age crept up on these venerable ladies, they moved towards Darlington to be nearer their kinswoman, Miss Backhouse, of Woodcrest Road.

A few small items got left behind, such as the glass lantern slides from about 1910 featured on this page, which lay forgotten in a tin box.

They show a couple of local scenes, as well as pictures from a cruise to New York and further afield.

It is strange to think of a young Backhouse drawing the curtains of Dryderdale and putting on a wondrous travel show, using these pictures, to entertain his family.

In 1963, the estate was sold by auction to the fruit machine king Vince Landa. He had many ideas for Dryderdale, which are unlikely to have chimed with the Backhouses' Quaker beliefs. He tore off Shull's top storey, complete with veranda, ready to convert it into a country club and German beer garden.

Mr Landa's empire collapsed in 1967 with the One-Armed Bandit Murder in South Hetton. His brother, Michael Luvaglio, was convicted of killing one of his employees, Angus Sibbet, although that conviction is now being questioned.

Dryderdale and Shull were sold on once more, and in 1971 featured in the film Get Carter, which starred Michael Caine and was loosely based on the One Armed-Bandit Murder story. Film fans will know that in the film Dryderdale was the home of the local crime lord, Cyril Kinnear.

In 1974, Dryderdale was gutted by fire, but it has now been restored and operates as a luxury bed and breakfast.

l With many thanks to the Walshaw family for their help with this article

Published: ??/??/2004

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