Echo memories - Canals, coal and the birth of Dixie

THE Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) is the project which gave the Industrial Revolution the mechanical momentum to turn Britain into a world leader.

The S&DR opened in 1825, and when its steam-powered locomotives started to behave properly, in the early 1830s, it proved that this new technology could work on a hitherto unimagined scale. There was now no turning back for the Industrial Revolution.

Via the history of the S&DR, the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution can be traced back to a small stretch of canal on Cockfield Fell. Now swamped with reeds but still clearly visible, it was here, in 1767, that George Dixon tried to launch an extraordinary scheme.

George and his younger brother, Jeremiah, grew up playing on the fell, where their father owned several small coal-pits.

There they learnt all sorts of mathematical skills, and Jeremiah became an astronomer. In 1761, the Royal Society sent him to Sumatra to study the path of the planet Venus. On the boat, he became very friendly with another astronomer, Charles Mason.

After studying Venus, Mason and Dixon were sent to the US to use their mathematical skills to sort out a boundary dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Between 1763 and 1769, they drew their line, which effectively separated the slave-owning states of the South from the free states of the North.

The line, naturally, took their name - Mason-Dixon - and the negro slaves in the South nicknamed the free land to the north "Dixie-land". It was there that Dixieland jazz grew up - with its roots firmly on Cockfield Fell.

Back on the fell, brother George was doing all kinds of experiments. He was producing gas from coal, and his house in Cockfield became the first in the country to be so illuminated.

But George was frustrated. He had inherited the mines, but apart from keeping him in interesting experiments they were not much use, unless he could find someone to buy the coal.

Cockfield Fell, up the Gaunless Valley, is miles from anywhere, so George resolved to build a canal from the fell to the River Tees around Winston. Then he would dig the Tees out and sail his boats to Stockton, and from there on to the huge London market.

To prove he could do it, he dug a stretch of canal on the fell and built a flat-bottomed boat to sail on it. When it worked, he was so excited that he called his friend, landowner Lord Barnard, of Raby Castle, to come and have a look at it.

But Lord Barnard was not impressed. He was not going to contribute financially to any such barmy project, and he certainly was not going to have waterways wandering across his land.

Undeterred, George called a meeting of entrepreneurs in the Post House, in Post House Wynd, Darlington. The meeting included the grandfathers of Edward Pease and Jonathan Backhouse, who later played key roles in creating the S&DR.

That 1767 meeting instructed a surveyor to draw a canal between Winston and Stockton, passing through Cockerton.

Although the canal was never dug because of the expense, it was the first time anyone had thought of linking the coalfield of south Durham to the sea.

The idea resurfaced in the early 19th Century. The plans were resurrected and modified, and ended up as the Stockton and Darlington Railway, linking the coalfield with the sea.

Cockfield Fell is a wonderful place full of 2,000 years of history, including the reed-lined remains of George's canal - and the odd cuckoo. Echo Memories is planning to look at its history, and that of the Haggerleases Line, more fully in the near future.

If you would like a head start, a guided walk is being held across the fell on Saturday. It will look at the colliery history, and will leave the Gaunless Valley Visitors' Centre, in Butterknowle, at 2pm.

An exhibition is on display at the centre from 11am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday, with a lecture on coalmining in the valley starting at 2pm on Sunday.

IN recent weeks, Echo Memories has been concentrating on the Aeolian Quartet, which was formed in 1906 by stonemason Jack Johnson.

Jack built the infamous Aeolian House in Morton Palms, Darlington, in 1933, and his stonemason's shop was in Parkgate, beside St Hilda's Church.

The Johnson family originated in the Loftus area of Yorkshire. The first Johnson to come to Darlington was James Peacock Johnson - whose fancy middle name was his mother's maiden name - and he set himself up in business.

His eldest son was Charles Peacock Johnson, who married Margaret Burn Hewitson. Her middle name marked her out as a member of the Burn family of Cockerton, and one of her ancestors, George Burn, had a boot shop at the top of the yard in Skinnergate, which still bears the family name.

Charles Peacock Johnson died in 1911, aged 37, of lung disease - a common ailment for stonemasons who worked in dusty conditions.

So when James Peacock Johnson died in 1915, it fell to another son, the singer Jack, to inherit the business.

One of the last stonemasons to work in Parkgate was Ray Connor, James Peacock's great-grandson.

Ray, who still lives in Darlington and keeps the family's musical tradition going as a member of The Melltones singing group, worked there from 1940 until a few weeks before the business closed in 1954. Soon after closure, the Johnsons' workshop was cleared, leaving today's car park beside St Hilda's.

Another of James Peacock's great-grandchildren, Margaret Kelly-Stubbs, also still lives in Darlington. Her husband, George, has done much work on the Johnson family tree.

THE Aeolian Quartet won first prize at the Middlesbrough Eisteddfod in 1908, but they were not the first Darlington choir to do so.

That honour belongs to the Darlington Male Voice Choir, which sang its way to victory soon after it was formed in 1894. Its leading light was its conductor, William Bethell.

Very little survives of the male voice choir. It struggled for members in the late 1930s, was revived in 1951, but disbanded in 1959 when there were more singers on stage than there were listeners in the audience.

But we do have a July 1900 picture (above left), which was found in an attic in America where birds had been nesting and so had made rather a mess of it.

And we do know that second on the right in the front row is Charles William Raine, who hailed from Mickleton and later emigrated to the US.

We can also surmise that Mr Bethell, the conductor, is seated in the front, and from a report on the choir's 1898 social evening, we gather that other members in the picture might be Marshall Dove, Alfred Harrow, Messrs Harrand, Barker, Sowerby, Fairless, Stephenson, Gibson, Smailes, Suggett and young Fred Hartley, the piano player.

If anyone can fill in the gaps, we would be grateful - and we would love to identify the Darlington house in the background.

WHILE we are making music, we shall return to Eliza Bragger, of Bishop Auckland, who, in the 1860s, was helping her mother run a boarding house where artistes stayed while performing at the Eden Theatre, Newgate Street.

Eliza, it will be remembered, married one of the artistes, Professor Luigi Meurice Hiodini, "the Most Astounding Prestidigitateur in the World".

Echo Memories told of his mysterious disappearing act back in March.

Eliza had two sisters, Ada and Emma. Ada's son was called Billy Dick and he was a trombonist in the Durham Light Infantry band.

During the First World War, he lost an arm but had a hook fitted so he could continue to use the slide on his trombone. After the war, he settled in Glasgow and performed with the BBC Scottish Orchestra.

Emma's son, John Inman (1877-1944), also played in the DLI band. His speciality was the trumpet and drums.

He was a miner at Newton Cap colliery, and once was so seriously injured he was pronounced dead. However, he sat up on the slab in the morgue and returned to musical life.

He played the big bass drum in the colliery band. The trouble was that he was a small fellow who could barely see over the top of his enormous drum, and he liked a drink.

This was a recipe for disaster, and at one Durham Miners Gala, small John was so much the worse for wear that, banging away on his big bass drum, he followed the wrong colliery band into Durham Cathedral.

Nevertheless, he was well-respected locally, playing regularly at the Eden Theatre. Indeed, his kettledrum, having passed through several hands, is now owned by the Durham Education Authority's music service.

John's brother, Joe, was also theatrically-minded, for he married the cousin of the Blackpool comedian Frank Randle. They lived in Etherley Dene and took to the stage with John's intriguingly-named Wiffing Waffing Wuffing Band.

The Wiffing Waffing Wuffing Band was a travelling concert party; as well as music, members performed monologues, played the spoons and cross-dressed. Many of their performances raised money for charity.

This information has been supplied by John Inman's grand-daughter, Margaret Taylor, of Sedgefield.

But, amazingly, it fits in with a picture sent in recently by Jennifer Murthar, of Bishop Auckland.

She writes: "Late last year my mother-in-law, Elizabeth Murthar, died. When we were going through her old photographs, the one of the Etherley Dene Wiffing Waffing Wuffing Band caught our attention.

"We know she was born at Etherley Dene in 1911, and left there in her teens to go down to London to become a domestic. But we would love to know why the band had such an unusual name."

Sadly, no one is able to explain the derivation of the Wiffing Waffing Wuffing Band, although locally, if children are told "to stop waffing" they are obviously messing about. Can you help?

Published: 12/06/2002

If you have any information, memories or pictures to add to any of the topics covered in today's column, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.