Support for the bridge master

Unfairly so, says the businessman who has built a bridge to Bouch’s memory.

THOUGH blood relatives, the John North and Gadfly columns have never been close. They go their own way, do their own thing.

Sometimes you’d hardly think they were kinsmen at all.

Thus this is a family first. The first bit of today’s column picks up where yesterday’s was left hanging.

We’d been talking of Thomas Bouch, a 19th Century railway engineer and bridge builder, who not only masterminded the great railway across the Pennines from Durham to Lancashire, but who was held responsible for the Tay Bridge disaster of December 1879.

The bridge had been opened 18 months earlier. Girdered with praise, Bouch was knighted after Queen Victoria crossed it, When the bridge collapsed in a force-10 gale, killing 75 rail passengers, Bouch’s reputation was lost with it. Stripped of his honour, he died the following year, a broken man.

The public inquiry found that the railway company had sacrificed safety and durability to save costs. The Tay Bridge had been badly designed, badly built and badly maintained.

Charles Meik, his assistant, proved Meik by name and nature, blaming the boss. Bouch’s plan for the Forth Road bridge, already adopted, was quickly cancelled again.

The rest of the country got the wind up, too, for Bouch had built many bridges – like the Redheugh road bridge in Gateshead, the 640ft Lands viaduct on the Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle branch and the towering Hownes Gill, near Consett.

On the South Durham and Lancashire Union, the vast ironwork lattice bridges at Deepdale, near Barnard Castle, and Belah between Kirkby Stephen and Tebay were ordered to be made singletrack, and so remained almost until the line’s closure in the 1960s.

In the latest Stainmore Railway Company magazine, as yesterday’s column noted, Cath Gregory questions whether Bouch’s reputation has been traduced (or as a bridge builder might say, traduced to piers.) Tony Cooper has no doubt of it, so much so that he has built Bouch Bridge on his company’s award-winning West Park housing development in Darlington.

It is not, admittedly, over a gaping ravine as were Deepdale and Belah, but over the truculent West Beck.

The thought’s there, though.

“What Bouch and his people were building 150 years ago was at the very edge of all that was happening, the biggest advances since Roman times,” says Tony.

“If anything, it was probably far more the fault of the Teesside iron and steel than of Bouch himself. The line over Stainmore wasn’t just a parochial branch railway, it was a lifeline between Europe and America without having to sail around Britain.

“He did a fantastic job and it lasted until Dr Beeching closed the line.

He deserves to be remembered with far more affection than he has been.”

Son of a Cumbrian sea captain, Bouch was just 25 when appointed manager and engineer of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway, moving later to the Stockton and Darlington.

The bridge on West Park is of concrete, not cast iron – the council wouldn’t adopt it otherwise – but has incisions to replicate Bouch’s bridge profiles. The stone is from Catcastle Quarry, near Barnard Castle, from which the Deepdale stone came.

Tony, a director of Bussey and Armstrong and one of life’s great enthusiasts, has named roads on West Park after railway men and machines, including Timothy Hackworth Drive and Sans Pareil Square.

“We couldn’t forget Shildon,” he says, sagely.

Each name sign – like Locomotion Lane – is suffixed by a line of poetry.

“The first train fired by skill and chance Led the world on its merry dance.”

There’s a Catcastle Court and even Bleath Ghyll, the location on the Stainmore line where in the infamous winter of 1962-63 a steam locomotive was trapped in a snow drift for five weeks.

Tony’s getting up steam about that one, too. “I suppose,” he says, “that someone’s also going to want to blame Thomas Bouch for that.”

Where there’s brass

There’s music everywhere this week – from a band, from a quire, and even from the bats in the belfry.

FOREVER in step, forever in tune, Ferryhill Town Band is marking its centenary with a CD called Angel of the North.

Much of today’s column, indeed, enjoys a distinctly musical note. They were formed in 1909 as Mainsforth Colliery Band, the pitmen docked a ha’penny a week to support the musicians and other social activities.

Now they’re backed, faithfully and generously, by Ferryhill Town Council. “They’ve taken us under their wing, really recognise the value of the band to the town,” says Peter Atkinson, one of the centenary organisers. It’s the usual thing, adds Peter, all about money. “Instruments can be up to £5,000, insurance is expensive, music and travel for 25 members can cost a fortune.

“I suppose it’s like most hobbies, it can cost you a fortune if you want to do it right.”

Most members remain Ferryhill folk, or have strong local connections. Eric Schlosser and Brian Chaplin, chairman and secretary, both have 45 years in harmony; Len and Barbara Potts and their son Andrew – soprano, flugel horn, principal cornet – ensure family connections.

Usually they rehearse twice a week. On Tuesday they played at Ferryhill Methodist church, where the photographer caught up, but when the column, as ever, was on football duty. We hope to join them soon. The CD includes Angel of the North, centenary music written by much-in-demand composer Paul Lovatt- Cooper from Black Dyke Mills. It costs £12, includes a history of the band, and is available from Ferryhill town hall, Thinford Nursery or band members. Philip Atkinson is on 01740 656118.

THE principal North-East exponent of West Gallery music is a group – quire, as they prefer to be known – called Joyful Noise. The name could hardly be better. West Gallery is church music from around 1700-1850, so named because of the singers’ usual location. It could equally have been called the peasants’ end.

The At Your Service column wrote about them – “the panoply splendid, the singing better still” – after an event at Blaydon in 2003.

On Bank Holiday Monday, May 25, the quire embarks on a singing tour of Weardale – called Land of Pure Delight, no less appropriately – to which all are welcome.

“It should be a fantastic occasion,” says co-leader Chris Gardner, said in the 2003 column to bear “a creditable (if not necessarily intentional) resemblance to Johann Sebastian Bach”.

With accompaniments on instruments of the day, they’ll be singing at St Thomas’s in Stanhope, at 10.30am, Eastgate Methodist church from 12- 12.30pm, St John’s Chapel church from 2pm and, finally, at the wonderful High House chapel at Ireshopeburn from 3pm.

“Tea and stickies will follow,” says Chris, though the still greater attraction is that by special request – mine – the entire company will sing both And Can It Be? and O For a Thousand Tongues.

Though High House may need to check their roof insurance, it is emphatically not to be missed. MAY 25 promises to be some day. At around 10pm, following a concert by the Mandolinquents, folk from the Swaledale festival will gather in St Andrew’s churchyard at Grinton – the next door pub’s good, too – to hear a bat symphony.

It’s a bit complicated. “Composer Robert Jarvis uses the ultrasonic sounds of bats searching for food to create a piece of music that celebrates this often unheard wonder of nature,” says the invitation.

It involves a series of strategically placed bat detectors, which sounds like something from Gotham City, and a “central sound manipulating computer”.

Since there’s also mulled wine, and the whole thing’s called Echolocation, we’d best be at that one too. All others welcome; admission free. STILL the music swells. Mavis Sherwood asks us to mention a concert at Hetton-le-Hole Methodist church on June 5 (7.30pm) by Matthew and Rachel Hynes – he on the organ, his wife soprano. Rachel was previously a principal with Scottish Opera, Matthew’s an organist and choirmaster in Ayr. Admission on the door, £5.

ANOTHER high note, we wrote two weeks ago about Mike Devereux’s appeal for unwanted musical instruments to ship to black kids in South Africa. “It’s the only way they’re going to learn the real joy of music,” he’d said. As direct result, he’s already been offered two organs, a piano, a guitar, a piano accordion, a cello and bow, keyboard, banjo and a Boosey and Hawkes e-flat clarinet.

Mike’s in Billingham, his business interests in transport and removals meaning that he can not only collect but also arrange free shipping. He can still be contacted on 01642-560854 or on mikedev@britdev.com

LAST week’s photograph of a Durham mayoral procession, joined in 1936 by Joachim von Ribbentrop – Hitler’s ambassador to Britain – should have been credited to Mike Richardson, who published Durham Cathedral City. Thanks to him.

SO finally, the column gets to have a week off. On returning, there’s a flower festival to open at St Catherine’s church in Crook on at 7pm on May 28, preview tickets £5. The festival runs from 10am to 4pm on May 29 and 30 – barber shop concert by the Lantones at 7.30pm on the Saturday – and on Sunday from 1pm to 5pm. The Bishop of Durham preaches at 5pm that evening, by which time the column will again be blossoming, too.