The deadly crash of 1969

FRED HENDERSON was doubly delighted to see the picture in Memories 185 of the ANSA garage at Langley Moor, near Durham City.

Doubly delighted because Fred now has the garage on the site, and because his second job, when he was just 21 years old, was with ANSA garage. The initials stood for the garage owner, Alan Neville Stuart Able – or “Sir”, as Fred calls him in his memoirs.

In the 1970s, Fred was regarded as probably the best non-professional rally driver in the North-East, winning more than 40 rallies with his Toyota and Vauxhall teams, but his book, Breakdown Doctor, also covers the period from 1960 to 1973, when he was working for ANSA as a vehicle recovery mechanic.

In those days of unreliable cars, roadside mechanics were a regular part of life.

“One frequent casualty of bad mechanical reliability was Kate Adie, who ran an old Hillman Imp,” writes Fred, of the Sunderland lass who was then a reporter on Radio Durham.

Fred Henderson’s book

“Even a good Hillman Imp was bad news, and hers was no exception.

I recall her being very tall and slim and unsuited for travelling in such a small vehicle. Apart from breaking down frequently, she would often call at the workshop to ask if her vehicle was safe for a particular journey, which was probably less than ten miles.”

Ms Adie was present in her professional capacity at an event on August 14, 1969, that Fred understandably remembers vividly. She was reporting on the Crawleyside Bus Disaster when Fred arrived on the awful scene, summoned by the police to right the vehicle.

It contained 42 members and friends of the Blackhall pensioners’ bowling team who were returning home after playing their annual fixture against Consett. Their elderly bus, made of aluminium and wood and which required skilful double declutching to regulate its speed, had hurtled out of control down the notorious one-in-six bank towards Stanhope.

Fred Henderson at the wheel of his car in February 1975

As it hit houses and walls, it disintegrated, the bulk of it coming to rest upside down embedded in a building.

“The Chief Superintendent believed there were up to two dozen people who had died, and many more seriously injured,” writes Fred. “He was anxious that there were no more people either trapped alive or dead under the remains of the coach, so he needed it to be carefully lifted so a search could be carried out.”

It was Fred’s job, with “Sir” in attendance, to lift the coach without toppling his new Scammel recovering vehicle down the steep hill.

The ANSA garage on the A690, near the confluence of the rivers Deerness and Browney, at Langley Moor

Fortunately, there were no further casualties beneath the wreckage – but still the death toll was 20. Fred assisted removing the broken bits of bus to the bottom of the bank for analysis.

“Some of the people’s personal belongings were put at the side of the road to be sorted, and I was taken aback by the number of false teeth,”

writes Fred. “There must have been at least ten sets, and quite a number of pipes.”

Kate Adie, in 1984 – about 20 years after she was troubled by a Hillman Imp

Such a sight caused the challenging motor vehicle accident scene to change into a place of carnage where people had lost their lives. “I suddenly felt that this was not just a job, it was a terrible job,” says Fred.

In Blackhall – population 7,000 – the accident had a devastating effect. On the 40th anniversary, in 2009, a plaque bearing the names of the victims was unveiled.

Four years after the accident, Fred parted company with “Sir” and set himself up in business in a disused workshop under the railway bridge in Durham City. It has expanded vastly since then, and five years ago it acquired the former ANSA garage on the A690 to the north of Langley Moor.

Fred Henderson was called to right the coach which crashed on Crawleyside Bank, above Stanhope, on August 14, 1969

Fred’s book was published in 2005 and is available for £9.50 plus post and packing from the company website, fredhenderson.com, or by calling 0191-384-6319.

THE archive pictures in Memories 185 concerned the Meadowfield and Langley Moor area to the west of Durham City. Mr JAH Porteus writes from Glebe Village in Washington to tell us that the lorry bears the name of Rotoclave, a company that made concrete building blocks, and its factory could be seen on the skyline beyond the wet fish van parked in Office Street.

When Memories visited the area recently, we were delighted to spot a pre-Second World War cast iron fingerpost directing traffic ever so precisely – Darlington, it said, was 16¾ miles away. Half-a-mile away, it said, was Browney Colliery, which opened in 1871. At its peak during the First World War, Browney Colliery employed 950 men. Dorman Long and Company, the Middlesbrough firm, took it over in the mid- 1920s and kept it as a mass employer until it closed in 1938.

A mobile wet fish shop in Office Street, Langley Moor, on July 24, 1965

Dorman Long and Company’s involvement in the area is remembered by the Italian-sounding name of the terrace of houses behind the fingerpost: Dorlonco Villas – Dorman Long company villas.

And near to the fingerpost was the parish council noticeboard – that’s Brandon and Byshottles Parish Council. Brandon is simply explained: it is the “broom hill”.

Byshottles is far more difficult, particularly as no one can locate it on a map. Most people say that it comes from an Old English word “botl”, which is a dwelling or a small place – there are quite a few – but one call-out was anything but routine bottles, like Shilbottle or Newbottle, in the North-East.

A far more interesting theory is that it comes from an Anglo-Saxon word “scytels”, which meant a bolt or a bar. Therefore, it could be that the area’s prison cell was here, with the doors bolted to stop people getting out, or it could be that there was a latrine here, with the doors bolted to stop people getting in.

The Rotoclave wagon in Langley Moor on July 24, 1965

MANY thanks to all who have been in touch about any of the topics in recent Memories. Wendy Craig’s schooldays and strange-looking 1960s police cars are obviously keeping lots of people entertained, so more on them next week.