THERE is much debate about the future of Sadberge reservoir, on the eastern outskirts of Darlington, which has been disused since 1985. Northumbrian Water wants to build up to 34 homes on the site; the parish council would prefer a nature reserve.

Although the reservoir is now derelict, there is still a hexagonal or octagonal control tower on top of it which is visible from the A66. Memories seems to remember that the tower once had castellations on it, but if it did, those have now gone.

The tower’s date stone, apparently, is intact: “S&MWB Sadberge Reservoir 1886”.

The reservoir was constructed by the Stockton and Middlesbrough Water Board, an organisation founded in 1876 by an Act of Parliament. Before the Act, Teesside’s water was all abstracted from the River Tees at Broken Scar on the west of Darlington, and pumped eastwards by the Tees Cottage Pumping Station. The Act, though, gave the S&MWB permission to build six reservoirs up in Teesdale to quench the thirst of the growing Teesside iron and steel industry.

However, building reservoirs was extremely expensive, and the water board struggled to raise the money. Instead, in 1885, it started constructing the reservoir at Sadberge – the highest point for miles around – to hold 12 million gallons of Tees water.

In 1894, after much local and national criticism of its inaction, the S&MWB – whose Victorian headquarters can still be seen in the centre of Stockton – built Hury reservoir. It was estimated that Hury would cost £108,637 (about £12.6m in today’s prices), but it was completed for £224,933 (about £26m today). Despite the gargantuan overspend, the board pushed on and completed Blackton reservoir two years later, at a similarly inflated cost.

Sadberge, and its neighbouring reservoir at Long Newton which was built in 1905, was used to control the water coming down from Teesdale.

When Long Newton was enlarged in the early 1980s, Sadberge became redundant and, 30 years later, debate about what to do with it continues.

There is, though, a monument to the reservoir on the village’s green. When it was being dug, about 12ft down, the diggers struck an unusually large boulder. Historian, naturalist, businessman and arch Tory William Wooler, of Sadberge Hall, heard about the find and had the three-and-a-half ton stone hauled out of the hole. He helped identify it as an erratic: a boulder that had travelled on a glacier 80,000 years ago from the top of Cumbria down the Tees Valley and was left when the ice melted at Sadberge.

It was Mr Wooler’s idea to install the stone on the green in June 1887 to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria who, as Memories 213 told, among her many titles was the Countess of Sadberge.

RECENT Memories have been telling how until the 1950s, circuses travelled on trains. This gave rise to some extraordinary scenes in Durham and Darlington of elephants, and other exotic animals, wandering through the streets from the station to the showfield.

John Rusby now weighs in with his memories of Chipperfields circus train – maroon wagons with yellow lettering on the side – arriving in Bishop Auckland.

“It was a very exciting time for us young boys,” he says, “as we would go down to the station to see the elephants being unloaded. After they were lined up, they then walked from the station, trunks wrapped around the tails of the ones in front, and marched up to Cabin Gate and on to the circus field on Woodhouse Lane (it is now the police station).

“There were no traffic lights at Cabin Gate in those days, but very big crowds of people gathered to watch.

“I remember to this day that, unfortunately, one elephant decided to go to the toilet in the middle of the crossroads – a sight and smell that is hard to forget.”

IN Memories 153 back in November 2013, we said that there was a brick that you could not get for nor love nor money. It was a “Love” brick, and we were wrong: one has recently been discovered near Durham City and could be yours for a little money.

For brickophiles, a Love brick is the holy grail. Joseph Love was a successful Victorian colliery entrepreneur who, in partnership with Joseph Straker and Henry King Spark, had mines at Willington, Oakenshaw, Sunnybrow and Shincliffe.

He built some of his colliery buildings out of his own bricks in which he had pressed his name: Love.

Mr Love lived in Mount Beulah in North Road, Durham (now St Leonard’s School) and died in 1875.

Any brickologists who would like a little bit of love in their lives are welcome to email the owner of this lovely piece of brickwork: george.barnett2@tiscali.co.uk