A SPRING clean has taken place beside Willington library. The grass has been cut, the litter has been cleared, the shrubs have been cut back, and an old stone with royal connections has been revealed.

Only a foot or so of the stone protrudes above the ground – who knows how much of it is below – and moss is unmoveably encamped on one of its faces, but, with a little imagination, you can see that the dents and depressions in the stone could once have been a carving.

For the several decades that the stone it has lived surrounded by bushes, Willington historian Olive Linge has kept a watchful eye on it, but now its full glory has been revealed to the world, she’d like the world to know its royal story.

Because the old history books say that 500 years ago, Mary, Queen of Scots “crossed Spennymoor and rested awhile by an old stone which had been set up to mark the track over the moor. This stone is said to be still in existence, embedded near the pavement by the road to the railway station”.

It is this same stone on, we believe, the same spot that can be seen in the library shrubbery.

Mary was born in 1542 and within six days was proclaimed Queen of Scots. In 1558, she had a strong claim to the English throne but instead Elizabeth I – a Protestant – became queen, so Mary – a Catholic – had to make do with becoming the Queen of France when her husband became king.

So at the age of 17, Mary wore the crowns of two countries and laid claim to a third.

But it all went wrong for her when she was 18. Her husband died, so she lost the French throne, and the French forces which had propped up Scottish throne withdrew, allowing the English to take over. Mary had no option but to live in Scotland under Elizabeth’s rule.

But it was an unstable affair – there were plots and murders and murderous plots until, in 1568, the web of intrigue became too much and she was forced to leave Scotland.

She came to northern England. She was certainly in Newcastle for a while, and it is said that Lady Adeline Neville, of the famous Catholic family who owned Raby Castle near Staindrop and Brancepeth Castle near Willington, invited her to stay at Willington Hall – it must have been on her journey there that she rested her derriere on the stone on the moor.

But to Elizabeth, a free-roaming Mary was trouble. So she had her arrested and imprisoned in Bolton Castle in Wensleydale.

This triggered the Rising of the North, when Charles Neville, the 6th Earl of Westmoreland, encouraged other northern noblemen in trying to overthrow Elizabeth, free Mary and return England to the ways of Catholicism.

Brancepeth Castle – just a stone’s throw from Mary’s stone – was the starting point of the rebellion on November 10, 1569. On November 14, Durham was occupied and mass was held in the cathedral. On November 16, a proclamation was nailed to the door of Staindrop church and Barnard Castle was captured. Then Hartlepool fell, and the rebels marched on Darlington and York.

But by mid-December, Elizabeth had mustered a large army which was heading towards Durham. The rebel leaders suddenly realised the game was up, and fled. About 800 of their men were arrested and sentenced to death; those left alive were heavily fined and had their property seized. Charles Neville eluded execution, but he lost both Brancepeth and Raby castles for ever, and ended up penniless on the continent.

After that brush with excitement, Mary’s stone became overgrown and the Willington area returned to the backwaters of history. It was just another small agricultural settlement with a population, in 1831, of 215.

But in 1840, coal was discovered nearby and the population exploded to 965 in 1851.

Then, in 1856, the railway line from Bishop Auckland to Durham City came rushing through, and the population growth continued: in 1861, it was 2,393; by 1911, it was 5,962.

As the railway line came rushing through, Mary’s stone was rediscovered – whether it was moved, no one knows, but it certainly was allowed to remain next to the station approach.

But the coalrush came to an end in the 1960s. In 1967, the district’s last colliery at Brancepeth, which only a decade earlier had employed 2,200 men, shut, and in 1971, the abandoned railway and Willington station – which had closed in 1964 – were dismantled.

The line was turned into a walkway and cyclepath, and on November 6, 1975, a small library was opened with a stock of 15,000 books on the station site.

A pathway was laid from the main street to the library over the grass and a little shrubby area was planted up around the old stone which had somehow survived the industrial era and the relandscaping.

Olive has kept her watchful eye on Mary’s stone ever since, and now that the spring clean has revealed its full glory, so we are pleased to tell its story.

BLOB With many thanks to Olive Linge and her son, Kenneth, for the pictures

MEMORIES 277, you will recall, told of Kirkcarrion, the enigmatic tree-topped hill overlooking Middleton-in-Teesdale. It is said to be a Bronze Age burial mound – perhaps a Prince Caryn of the Brigantes tribe was buried up there.

But, we learn, he is not alone. Such is Kirkcarrion's lofty position, with all over Teesdale and Lunedale spread out around it that it is a popular place for people to have their ashes scattered after their trials and tribulations on this earth are through.

RECENT Memories have been fascinated by Cyclists' Touring Club plaques that were placed on the sides of pubs and restaurants which offered special deals to club members. The plaques featured the CTC's emblem of winged wheels, and the first that went up in the 1890s were made of very heavy cast iron. After the First World War, the plaques were made of lighter lead or enamel.

Bob West in Darlington draws our attention to the location of a lost CTC plaque. "It was on the Brooklyn Cafe, which was situated just north of the Ketton Classic Car garage on the A167 Durham Road as it leaves Darlington and Harrowgate Hill and heads towards Coatham Mundeville," he says. "My dad and I used to stop off there when cycling back home to Chilton after fishing at Neasham in the mid-1950s.

"The sign was of the square enamel type, and the cafe was quite small. Several years ago, it was demolished and replaced by a house which seems to have been built long and narrow due to the small frontage of the cafe."

Has anyone got a picture of the Brooklyn Cafe?

WE'VE had loads of response to the articles in Memories 274 and 275 about the 50th anniversary of the closure of North Road Locomotive Workshops in Darlington, which once employed 4,000 people. Many thanks to everyone.

Fred Ramshaw writes: "Ironically, it is also the 50th anniversary of the North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group (NELPG) which is dedicated to the saving of all things related to railways in the North-East .

"We are currently restoring in the Hopetown works locomotive number 2392 (NER)/65894 (BR), a P3 which was shipped from the North Road works on September 19, 1923 – so it is not even a stone's throw from where it was built.

"We are also operating Q6 2238 (NER)/63395 (BR), which was completed at North Road November 3, 1918, on the North York Moors Railway and J72 69023 "Joem", which was built in 1951 at North Road, on the Wensleydale Railway.

"These three locomotives are the only surviving examples of their classes which were once common in the North-East."

More information on the group's website, nelpg.org.uk