ERIC MEADOWS and Tony Herrington, of Coundon, were among those who answered the throwaway plea amid the pictures of Newton Aycliffe in Memories 217: why is there a Gort Road beside the town square?

They directed us to John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, the 6th Viscount Gort of County Galway in Ireland. He was born in 1886 in Westminster, educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, and showed immense bravery throughout the First World War. This culminated in winning the Victoria Cross on September 27, 1918, when, twice injured and under heavy fire, he continued to direct his men from his stretcher. His skill as leader ensured they won the battle near the Canal du Nord in France.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Gort was commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, although the retreat from Dunkirk signalled the end of his time as Britain’s leading soldier. He then became Governor of Gibraltar and was commander-in-chief in Palestine at the end of the war.

He died on March 31, 1946, and was buried in Kent. A month before his death, he was given a British viscountcy to go with his Irish peerage, and he chose to be called Viscount Gort of Hamsterley Hall in the County of Durham.

This was because his mother was Eleanor Smith Surtees, the daughter and co-heir of Robert Smith Surtees of Hamsterley Hall near Rowlands Gill. Robert Smith Surtees (1805-1864) was the Victorian novelist famed for his fox-hunting books and his character Mr Jorrocks, the “‘jolly, free-and-easy, fox-hunting grocer”. There is still a Conservative-inspired RS Surtees Appreciation Society which keeps his memory alive.

Viscount Gort of Hamsterley Hall seems rarely to have visited Hamsterley Hall, which fell into decline after his death.

His death, though, coincided with the creation of Newton Aycliffe – its development was announced on September 3, 1945, and its first residents moved in in 1948 – and so the war hero with a connection to Durham was chosen to have a street named after him in the newtown.