THIS is Weardale as it was in the late 19th Century.
These pictures are from an archive that has been kindly lent to us by Doreen and Geoff Spence, of Darlington, and it has come to them via the Maddison family of quarryowners.
Ord & Maddison were Victorian industrialists who specialised in working minerals in Weardale until their business, once based in Darlington, was bought out by Tarmac in 1962.
If you have anything to add to any of the pictures, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk – we'd love to hear from you.
THE QUARRYMEN: Ashes quarry in Stanhope is now a nature reserve, but from the 1870s until the late 1940s it was worked by more than 200 men digging primarily limestone out of the ground – the stone was used as flux in the blast furnaces of Consett. In its heyday at the start of the First World War, Ashes produced 136,000 tons of limestone a year, but it doesn't seem to have been owned by Ord & Maddison. There's great industry going on in this picture, with wagons waiting to be collected, and a steam engine on the left getting ready in a cloud of smoke.
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