Teesdale, Darlington or Stokesley area: locating our mystery pump?

We’ve had lots of suggestions but the answer is we’re not entirely sure.

The 1960s picture of the pump appeared in a packet of Teesdale pictures in The Northern Echo’s library, and so we assumed it was Romaldkirk, where there is a wood-encased pump on the green in front of the church.

Extraordinary goings-on on the pump in Romaldkirk in October 1960, with the church in the background

However, the pump in our picture has a rounded finial on top of it, whereas the Romaldkirk pump has always had a flat top, otherwise how would the young lady in another archive photo be perched so comfortably on top of it?

A late Victorian photo of Cockerton Green with the Garth Almshouses in the centre. On the left is the unmistakeable shape of a wood-encased pump

Ed Blakeburn pointed us to Cockerton village green where there was once a similar shaped pump while Peter Loughlin directed us to Great Ayton village green, where there is a pump with a finial top opposite the Royal Oak.

But it probably doesn’t have slatted sides (as seen below on Google StreetView).

“I’m sure your mystery pump on Hutton Rudby green with East Side and Barkers Row behind it,” said Alice Barrigan.

A Google StreetView image of Hutton Rudby pump today - it's just down to its lead pipe and stone trough

So off we cycled to Hutton Rudby, but on the green today is only a black iron standpump with a plaque saying it was installed by the parish council and Women’s Institute to commemorate the year 2000.

This illustrates the trouble with pumps: they change over time.

Because the Echo’s archive also has a wide view of Hutton Rudby green (above) in the 1960s which, in the distance, has a white wood-encased pump on the spot where the millennium pump is today. There’s also an old picture of pump with slatted sides in a state of decay (below).

So we reckon Alice is right. Our mystery pump (below) probably isn’t Teesdale at all, but it is the pump which once graced the centre of Hutton Rudby.