2:12pm Wednesday 17th March 2010
By Chris Lloyd
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."
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