THE view from Windy Hill, above Durham railway station, across the Wear to the embattlements and towers of Durham castle and cathedral is “the eighth wonder of the world”, according to the art critic and philanthropist John Ruskin.

From today, the view will be better still as Wharton Park on Windy Hill opens after its £3m restoration.

The park bears the name of William Lloyd Wharton, a classic North-East Victorian industrialist with a finger in many pies – he may even, with a little stretch of the imagination – be regarded as the region’s first fracker.

His family acquired Old Park, between Binchester and Byers Green to the west of Spennymoor, in the 17th Century, and both his grandfather and great-grandfather were mayors of Durham City. His father, Richard, became the City’s Tory MP in 1802, but his election was declared void two years later, "his payment of the travelling expenses of the non-resident freemen having been construed as bribery”.

An MP troubled by expenses – whatever next.

William was born in 1789. He was a barrister, a mineowner (Coundon’s main street is Wharton Street after him), and the chairman of the North Eastern Railway. His forefathers had bought Dryburn Hall on the top of Windy Hill, and in 1824, William built the stately house there which is centre of the hospital (although due to be demolished). He also bought the surrounding land, and laid it out as a pleasureground, with its focal point being its belvedere.

A belvedere is usually a little tower, perhaps a folly, built to make the most of a fine view. William’s belvedere was a mock gun battery, and his fine view was the eighth wonder of the world.

In the 1850s, William’s railway came rushing beneath his belvedere – his chief engineer Thomas Elliott Harrison built an 11 arch viaduct across William’s land into the new Durham station, which opened to passengers on April 1, 1857.

In July 1858, William generously allowed the public access to Windy Hill and the belvedere, although he retained ownership of the land. They came to know it as Wharton Park, or the People’s Park. It was Durham’s only public park, and its first ceremonial event was on March 7, 1863, when an oak tree was planted to commemorate the wedding of Princess Alexandra of Denmark and Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales (who became Edward VII). William Wharton would probably have been there, as he was a keen promoter of royal events.

He died in 1861, and the Windy Hill estate passed first to his brother and then to his nephew, John Lloyd Wharton, who also chaired the NER, and represented Durham in the House of Commons in the early 1870s. After he died in 1912, the family gave the park to the city, although John’s daughter, Mary, and her husband, Colonel Charles Waring Darwin, continued to live in Dryburn Hall.

Following the First World War, the whole estate came into the ownership of Durham County Council which, in 1923, relocated the statue of Neptune to the park. Since 1729, Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, had sat on top of drinking fountains in the Market Place, but with the growth of traffic in the 1920s, it was decided that he had grown too big for his pants and so had to be moved.

Under council-ownership, the park really opened up to the people: pre-Second World War, there were tennis courts, a putting green and a bandstand; post-war, 1,000 square yards was devoted to potato growing.

But park life wasn’t kind to Neptune: vandals defaced him and then, in 1976, God struck him with a rod of lightning. He survived, and, restored, is now back in the Market Place.

This weekend, Wharton Park reopens after its year-long, £3m restoration. Free events are happening between 11am and 3pm on both days, although the view that is the eighth wonder of the world is there 24/7.

IN 1845, when the River Wear was low and the wind was still, it was noticed that the water beside Framwellgate Bridge was in “a state of ebullition”, with streams of bubbles issuing from the riverbed. No one took much interest until William Lloyd Wharton spotted that a stream of bubbles had been in the same place for three consecutive days.

William, who owned coalmines at Coundon, concluded that it was “light carburetted hydrogen gas” which was being generated in the coal seams down below.

To prove his point, he acquired a boat, paddled across the Wear and applied a naked flame to the stream of bubbles, which he found to be “of a very inflammable nature”.

He then rigged up an inverted funnel which collected the gas and piped it to a tin reservoir floating on the surface of the water. Attached to the reservoir was a gas burner, complete with glass chimney, and the gas was ignited for the enjoyment of hundreds of people who gathered on the bridge to witness “the river on fire”.

This may have been the inspiration for the 21st Century Lumiere spectacle.

Scientists came from across the country to study the strange phenomenon, and some people started to work out how to illuminate the whole city from this free supply of gas.

However, after a few weeks, the bubbles slowly subsided until nothing at all was emanating from the bed of the Wear. Oh, frack, thought William...

MICHAEL RICHARDSON, of the Gilesgate Archive in Durham, sends this mystery postcard in the hope that someone can solve it. Where were these celebrations taking place – does anyone have any clues at all?

The card was sent to Miss N Carter at The Laundry at Brancepeth Castle, probably shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.

The tantalising message on the back reads: “If I can get PCs done, may come on S. Its such weather the printing is awfully slow… I was in Yorkshire this weekend – rained all the time… Did you get to Durham? We were there all night. Stayed to see fireworks. Yours etc GP.”

It is doubtful that GP worked in personal computers, but PCs were the accepted abbreviation for postcards, when such things were the height of fashion – the Edwardian equivalent of tweeting. So was GP a postcard printer? Perhaps he’d been to Yorkshire to take some photographs, and then on to Durham. Perhaps this view is in Durham before the fireworks lit up the night?

Please let us know if you can help.

PRIVATE John James Dawson, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, was killed in action on June 1, 1940. He was 37 years old, came from Shildon, and left a wife and parents.

We know these details as they are on a memorial card which Ken Tarn, of Aycliffe Village, inherited from his parents, who were from Shildon. It came with a story that Pte Dawson had been killed on HMS Hood.

But the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s website does not include a Pte John James Dawson among the British casualties of the Second World War, and HMS Hood sunk on May 24, 1941, killing all 1,418 men on board – a terrible blow to the British psyche as she was supposed to be invincible.

So can any one tell us any more – Ken would like to return the card to Pte Dawson’s family.