Recharging the battery (From The Northern Echo)

Recharging the battery

2:12pm Wednesday 17th March 2010 in

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A QUICK note because Bob Wilson might just have explained one of the mysteries of Tudhoe.

That picture I've used several times, the one with the car whose name I dare not write for fear of getting it wrong, was taken from a raised area known as "the battery" locally.

Originally I was told that it was the remains of the pitheap, but that's not the case.

Nearby are "the battery tunnels" through which a private railway line ran from the colliery to Spennymoor station.

Bob Wilson has just called from Escomb where locals refer to a small hill near the Weardale Railway line as "Battery Top". It is so called, he says, because during World War Two it had an anti-aircraft gun emplacement on it.

"All that's left of it now is a little indentation in the field, but the view from it is over the full valley, up to Westerton, over to Toronto, a good range," he says. "I remember my mother used to take mugs of tea across the middle of nowhere to the men who worked there."