Overshot in the dark, a news item a couple of weeks back told of a crippled light aircraft being guided onto Eshott Airfield in Northumberland by the headlights from the manager's car.

As the story took off, so did Ray Sparks' interest. Ray, from Newton Aycliffe, is a metal detector enthusiast and has unearthed an intriguing little mystery.

Eshott, between Morpeth and Alnwick, was home from November 2002 to August 2004 to 2,000 men and women of No 57 Operational Training Unit RAF, who flew Spitfires.

Exploring that way almost 20 years ago, Ray found a little brass plaque which he cleaned down and kept.

"This fireplace," it said, "is a gift to the airwomen of RAF Station Eshott from the people of Ceylon, 1943."

Why a fireplace? Why only to the airwomen and what was Ceylon's particular interest in keeping the home fires burning in rural Northumberland?

Even Graeme Carrott, a Newcastle based aviation historian who is writing a history of RAF Eshott, admits that he's unable to get to the hearth of the matter.

More commonly, says Graeme, there were "presentation aircraft", named after a country, organisation or individual who'd helped pay for their manufacture.

"It's intriguing. I just can't think why the Ceylonese would want to honour the women of Eshott, especially with a fireplace."

Ray Sparks is equally puzzled. "To be honest, I didn't even know that Eshott was still operational until I read the story in the Echo.

"I've been metal detecting for 25 years, found bits and pieces but never for profit, and would love to return this to a good home."

Eshott is now a base for private light aircraft and microlights, the runways remaining from Second World War days but almost all the original buildings gone.

It's owned by Storm Smith, who sounds like he should have been a character in Biggles, and who three years ago with blind co-pilot Miles Hilton-Barnes set a British microlight altitude record at 20,020ft and -60C above the airfield.

Mr Clarehugh, whose headlights helped that Cessna to safety, has been unavailable either to repatriate the plaque or to cast light and heat on the mystery.

It is a burning topic of which we have probably not heard the last.

Headed "The mumbles of Edward Sparkes" - Sparkes fly everywhere - the Internet embraces the wartime memoirs of a young pilot at Eshott.

There was a lot of bull, a lot of parades and a lot of saluting, Sparkes recorded, though the food was "truly excellent".

They lived four to a Nissen hut with a stove, lit about 4pm, in the middle of the floor. The commanding officer, he wrote, "represented a fascinating study in restrained violence".

Whatever the compensations offered by the WAAFs, Sparkes had eyes only for his Spitfire - "a wizard kite, so beautiful, like having the most powerful motor bike in the world between your knees, but in three dimensions."

Sparkes also tells of a mess encounter when they were drinking by the fireplace - could it have been the same fireplace that was a present from Ceylon?

Conversation with a married newcomer was interrupted by the pugnacious CO who not only told him that married men shouldn't be flying fighters but wondered what on earth the stuff was on his hair.

"If I went home smelling like that, my wife would think I'd been in a brothel," said the CO.

The youngster looked at him calmly. "My wife doesn't know what a brothel smells like, sir," he said.

The once-high flier was never seen at Eshott again.

Eshott Hall, next to the airfield, is home to Ho Sanderson - grandson of Sir William Angus Sanderson who in 1920 established Europe's first motor car assembly line.

Small world, it was at Birtley, near Chester-le-Street, using the munitions factories just vacated by the "Birtley Belgians" - featured in last week's column.

Three years ago, Ho organised the restoration of an Angus-Sanderson after a worldwide search. He found it in an Australian farmyard, where it was being used as a hen house.

He's got a ticket to Ryde

STANDING on platform one, we bump at Chester-le-Street railway station into Alex Nelson - self-styled station master, ticket agency entrepreneur and operator of the Sir Frank Pick Memorial Lavatory.

Alex knows his way round the railways, gives talks to WIs and the like on how to get the best deals (and to avoid the worst ones).

By holding a £104 annual season ticket from Ryde St John's to Ryde Esplanade, for example, he becomes entitled - like all season ticket holders - to a third off travel anywhere on Network South-East and to upgrade to first class for £3.

That he's only used the ticket to Ryde once in four years is neither here nor there. It's saved him an awful lot of money.

All's running well at Chester-le-Track, he says, save for the fact that no one's yet booked a day return on the 6.31, direct to Paignton.

The train arrives six hours and 34 minutes later, affords exactly an hour by the seaside and is back in Chester by half past eight.

Operated from Chester-le-Street, his nationwide ticketing operation promises "real people, no queues, no menus" and subsequently answered within five seconds.

The fare would be £127.90, said the helpful young man, but £42 if booked in advance. Devon air if not debonair, the journey will probably have to be undertaken. Paignton by numbers.

RECENT notes on the war memorial at Crook prompt ATS veteran Cordelia Stamp to send her book Silent Witness, an affectionately produced guide to the war memorials of Whitby and the villages thereabouts.

"It's a book I'm very proud of and one that I'm very glad I did, though it's not exactly a best seller," she concedes.

Nothing much more on the Crook mysteries, save (via John Briggs in Darlington) that Evelyn Davies died while with the NAAFI in the Holderness area of Humberside.

Via the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, John also points out that the cemetery at Hunwick, near Crook, contains just one war grave - and that's of a woman, too. Lorna Griffiths, a 20-year-old WAAF, lived in nearby Toronto.

FOLLOWING our little tour of West Park - Darlington's first new public park in 100 years - several volumes of additional information arrive from Tony Cooper of Bussey and Armstrong, the developers.

Tony even proposes another tour in the summer, when the rain might have stopped. There'll be dingy skippers, the column's favourite butterfly, too.

The road names are carefully themed, embellished with poetry. The pub, still to be called The White Heifer That Travelled, fits somewhere into the theme scheme, too - possibly something to do with the Durham Ox and its prodigious kin.

Apparently the pub company took some convincing. They thought a heifer was a derogatory term for a fat lass from Darlo.

...and finally, Dr Glen Reynolds - Darlington councillor, author, Quaker and shortly to be Roman Catholic - sends more information on the theory that Judas, if not exactly a good guy, was simply playing his role in the cosmic Grand Plan.

Glen's an expert on all this. Some might also suppose the Mail on Sunday to be, the newspaper having tagged its story on the forthcoming revelations as a "world exclusive". Others would simply recall that they read it here first.