“I SHALL never forget that night before he went to war because he came down to my mam’s in Horden in his army uniform, and he wound up the gramophone – a box with a big horn on it – put a record on and said ‘come on, Betty, let’s have a dance,” says Betty Cogland remembering her nephew, Private Jack Dawson.

“And my mam said ‘you mind what you’re doing, I’ve just put a new fireside rug down there’.

“So he rolled up the fireside rug and said ‘come on, it’ll be the last one before I go’. You see, he loved to dance, and I had more bruised toes than anyone because he had his army boots on.”

That was the last Betty saw of him – Jack was killed in action on June 1, 1940, during the Dunkirk evacuation.

Memories 284 published his In Memoriam card which Ken Tarn of Aycliffe was trying to return to Jack’s family. Betty, who was 15 at the time of the dance shouted out when she saw it: "That's my uncle Jack."

"I live on my own, so I don't know who I was shouting to," says Betty, now 92, and living in Shildon.

So now we know that Jack was born in Shildon in 1903 into a mining family, and he too went down the pit.

“My grandmother said ‘will someone get our Jack out of the pits’ because he was always having accidents,” says his daughter, Audrey, of Horden. “So he went down to London to find work, and met someone on the bus or train who got him a job in a hospital in Kent.”

He was working at the hospital when he was called up into the Royal Army Medical Corps. Therefore, during the evacuation at Dunkirk, he had to stay on French soil and assist wounded soldiers rather than jump on the first boat to safety.

In all, 338,226 British soldiers were evacuated on 800 boats over the course of eight days, but Jack was not to be one of them.

“My mam always said that he couldn’t swim so he wouldn’t have been able to get out to the boats and so he must have drowned,” says Audrey, who was just two-and-a-half when word came through that he was officially missing. Another version of the story is that he was tending the wounded in a hut when it was hit by a shell.

The evacuation was very confused, and according to research by Wally Mellors, of Middridge, the family waited a long time to learn of Jack’s fate. He was posted as “missing” on June 15, 1940, and it was not until February 14, 1942, that he was posted as “presumed killed in action”. Even today, the date of his death is officially given as "between May 31 and June 2, 1940".

His body was never recovered, and his name appears on the Dunkirk Memorial, along with the names of 4,500 other members of the British Expeditionary Force who never made it to the little boats.

When the news of Jack's death finally came through to his family spread between Shildon and Horden, his grieving parents printed the In Memoriam cards, and his picture hung for many years in the Shildon Independent Methodist Chapel.

We will be passing on the card to Audrey who, by coincidence, shares her birthday – August 5 – with her father and her grandfather.

ON Saturday, May 28, Brian Carrick, from north Cambridgeshire, was making a rare visit to south Durham where his grandparents had lived until their deaths in the 1950s. He’d only been up this way three times in the previous 60 years, and by amazing coincidence, his great-uncle, Ordinary Seaman William Carrick, featured in that day’s Memories.

William had died on June 1, 1916, in the Battle of Jutland – one of three lads from Evenwood to perish.

“At first I wondered whether he was a relation as you said he grew up at the Bridge Inn in Ramshaw,” says Brian. “But the picture you published of him is the same as a photograph I inherited in a locket which had been owned by my grandmother. It was side by side with a picture of my grandfather, but I didn’t know who he was.”

Brian’s grandfather, Edmund, was two years older than William. He married Lily Davies in 1913, and they set up home in Coronation Terrace, Cockfield.

“Needless to say I visited Ramshaw and Evenwood to bridge the missing 100 years all on the same day,” says Brian. “To say the least, I was amazed by what I learned, both from your article and from John Hallimond in Cockfield, who has been helping me.”

Any Carricks in the area who might be related to Brian, are invited to email him at brian@briancarrick.com

THE former mining village of Willington, in County Durham, does not have many royal connections, so the story in Memories 279 about how Mary, Queen of Scots, regally rested her derriere on a stone outside Willington library has gained a good deal of attention.

With the help of local historian Olive Linge, we told how in 1568-69, Catholic Mary had lost her Scottish throne to Protestant Elizabeth I of England. Mary sought sanctuary with wealthy Catholic families in the north of England, including the Nevilles, who owned everything from Raby Castle to Brancepeth Castle.

Lady Adeline Neville, the sister of the 6th Earl of Westmoreland, invited Mary to stay with her at Willington Hall.

The hall is now Grade II listed and one of its outbuildings is an attractive holiday let, but in the middle of the 20th Century, it was a scrapyard.

“I called there several times for parts for my 1951 MK1 Ford Consul when I lived at Micky Moor, in the early 1970s,” remembers Bob West. “The chap who I presume owned the place was quite a character: he was tall with a wonky or glass eye, and was called Jimmy. He sold old bangers and kept pigs, and was always cheerful and friendly.

“The hall was quite run down. I had a look inside one day and saw paintings of flowers and vines on the walls. Although faded, they were beautiful.

“Jimmy told me that Mary, Queen of Scots, had once stayed there, but I just took it with a pinch of salt. I've driven past the hall countless times and told the kids with a chuckle that Mary, Queen of Scots, once slept there, but now, having read the article, I realise I owe Jimmy an apology.”

Old Willingtonians say that Mary slept in a room on the upper floor and that there is a tunnel leading from the cellar through which she escaped when things became too hot. Some Willingtonians even say that it is Mary’s ghost which haunts the hall.

However, the current façade of the hall was added in 1884 when it was a colliery owner’s residence – Memories’ favourite Joseph Love, who had several pits around Durham City, lived there for a while.

There is an older building behind the façade which may date back to the mid 17th Century – so in the 16th Century, Mary must have visited an even older building.

Yet Lady Adeline definitely lived there, and her brother was so fervently Catholic that in 1569, he was one of the leaders of the Rising of the North in which northern earls sympathetic to Mary rebelled against Elizabeth. His involvement cost him his title and may even have driven Lady Adeline from Willington Hall.

So although not all the dates tally, there is definitely a seed of truth to the story of Willington’s royal connections. Perhaps that is why Mary rested her bottom on the stone outside the library – she was reading a history book she had just borrowed to try and find out what was going on.

IN Memories 280, there was a picture of the Bishop Auckland lamplighter going about his business in January 1964.

Tony Martins, a retired fireman, explained: “He came round with a long pole with a flint on it, and he fired the flint which lit the pilot light. In the picture, he’s turning a key to wind the clockwork motor which would turn on the gas so it could be ignited by the pilot light at the correct time.”

There were two settings on the light: one for summer time and one for winter time.

Several people, including Mr A Anderson and Billy Oxborough, said that the lamplighter was Tommy Kirkbride, who worked out of the gas depot at Tindale Crescent.

The picture brought back memories for Christine Veazey in Spennymoor.

“The maintenance man would walk round every two weeks with a short ladder to check the timer clock and the mantle burner,” she said. “We had a lamp outside our house in William Street, Auckland Park, where I lived for 20 years and played around it on winter nights. I was sad to see it go and be replaced by electrical lights.”