NO place can have any self respect unless it has a ghost. And Newton Cap has a ghost.

Florence Scales, of Bishop Auckland, takes up the story from the early 1950s:

"I was about 22 at the time, and my husband Jack and I lived in Gomer Terrace, Newton Cap, and my mother lived in Escomb. I used to go there when Jack was working late shift on the railway.

"I caught the 9.20pm bus back from Escomb and would have been walking down Newton Cap Bank at about 9.30pm, and this gentleman was walking on the road in the middle of the old bridge. I remember thinking he would be knocked over if a car came.

"I can picture it now as he came closer. He had a black coat on and a big hat, and he had a long white scarf with frills on the end.

"He doffed his hat to me and I thought 'That's queer', and then I looked back and he was gone.

"There was no one else around, and I hadn't passed anyone on the bank. I didn't dare tell anyone, and have always shrugged the ghost off because people will think I was crackers."

Florence shrugged the ghost off until reading recent Echo Memories.

First we told of the terrible suicide of William Forster in April 1780. With gambling debtors closing in, he shot himself in the ruins of his old hall at Newton Cap.

Then we told of the Skirlaw Bridge, on which Florence supposedly saw the ghost. We told how, in 1900, it had cantilever footpaths added to it. Before that there were no footpaths. Everybody had to walk in the middle of the road. Convinced?

ECHO Memories has been gently chastised for referring to the old bridge at Newton Cap as "the Skirlaw Bridge".

We call it that because it was built by Bishop Skirlaw about 1400.

Apparently, though, most people in Bishop Auckland refer to it simply as "the Newton Cap bridge".

This presents a problem, because most people outside Bishop Auckland refer to the neighbouring A689 crossing of the Wear as "the Newton Cap viaduct/bridge".

So, just for the sake of clarity, we will continue to call one the Skirlaw Bridge and the other the Newton Cap viaduct.

THEN, of course, there is the third Newton Cap bridge: the old footbridge built by Robert Craggs around the turn of the century so that miners from Escomb could avoid the wiggles of the Wear and get to work at Toronto colliery quickly.

Local historian Tom Hutchinson has kindly sent in a postcard from about 1905 which is labelled the "swing bridge" - a name MM Brown of Bishop Auckland also recommends.

"I'm sure this bridge must have swung as people walked across it, although it certainly looks well made," says Mr Hutchinson.

The postcard appears in Mr Hutchinson's book Bishop Auckland To Wearhead (Tempus, £9.99).

MM Brown says that the swing bridge was removed about 1935, Toronto colliery having not reopened after the 1926 General Strike.

The bridge supports have been largely washed away by floods, although it appears some of the brickwork survives on the Newton Cap side of the Wear.

ECHO Memories has now made it on to the Internet.

It has its very own website, which contains the last seven columns: Willie Smith, the Darlington billiards world champion and record breaker; the story of Newton Cap, its bridges and its colliery; the terrible death of the eccentric millionairess Ann Allan; the break-up of the Barlow Farm estate, in Darlington; and the story of the Cockerton orphanage.

The Internet website address is www.thisisthenortheast .co.uk/leisure/memories or find it via The Northern Echo's site at www.thisisthenortheast. co.uk

* If you have any information or comments to add to this column - or any on the website - write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, telephone (01325) 505062

Published: Wednesday, March 6, 2002