FIFTY years ago this week, The Northern Echo reported that Tan Hill, the highest inn in England, was once more up for sale amid fears that “the high spirits may be losing some of their sparkle”.

The inn, which perches between Teesdale and Arkengarthdale at 1,732ft (528 metres) above sea level, had been bought 13 years earlier by George Carter, of Barnard Castle. Mr Carter, who owned 18 pubs, had been trying to sell it for years, but now his tenants had suddenly quit, he had dropped his asking price from £3,000 to £2,500.

“The inn was originally built for miners and was once known as the Miners’ Arms,” said the Echo. “It was also a place of rest and refreshment for travellers who used the rough road across the moors between Yorkshire and Westmoreland. Today, the Pennine Way passes close by.”

Poor quality coal has been scrabbled out of the ground in the wastes around Tan Hill since the 12th Century, and a lone inn was noted up there in 1586. The current building dates from the 17th Century when mining was at its peak. However, as the Durham deeper mines found better quality coal in the 19th Century, Tan Hill went into decline. The last mine in the area shut in 1929 after which the miners’ cottages, which had grown up around the inn, were cleared, leaving it all alone once again.

“Hound trailing and prize fighting were once held there,” said the Echo in 1968. “Now the main attraction is the annual show of Swaledale sheep.”

It rains 250 days a year at Tan Hill, and the name comes from an old English word “tang” meaning “fork”, suggesting the inn has always been at a crossroads.

150 years ago...

"ON Thursday, a message was received in Durham that there was a fire near Newton Hall, the residence of Mr H Bramwell, and requesting the service of the fire engines from Durham," said the Darlington & Stockton Times, The Northern Echo's older sister paper, exactly 150 years ago this week.

"Newton Hall is situated near the edge of a deep cutting on the railway between Durham and Leamside and a spark from a passing locomotive had set the grass on fire on the embankment on Thursday afternoon.

"The flames spread over a fog field, near the hall, and threatened to reach the vinery, and it was deemed necessary to send for the Durham fire engines."

There had been an important residence at Newton Hall since time immemorial, but the one that was threatened by the fire in 1868 was the work of Sir Henry Liddell, the coalowner and Durham MP. His family had bought the estate in the 1660s, and in 1717, Sir Henry had starting restoring and rebuilding the hall so that it became a mansion, set in its own pleasuregrounds, with a huge walled garden to the south which overlooked the city.

The phrase “fog field” is very interesting. We mentioned it recently and were subsequently told by readers that a “fog field” is a paddock in which the grass has been cut – presumably for hay – and which is starting to grow again. A hazy mass of new shoots apparently looks like fog – can this really be true?

As the 19th Century wore on, Ravensworth Castle in Gateshead increasingly became the home of the Liddells and so Newton Hall passed through several hands and was rented out to top people, like Mr Bramwell.

“Sgt Liddle and PC Cooper, arriving on the spot, summoned to their aid the servants in the hall and plenty of water being available, the progress of the flames was stopped within ten yards of the vinery before the arrival of the engines from Durham,” said the D&S Times.

So Newton Hall was saved in 1868 – but it still didn’t feature very highly on anyone’s list of priorities and by the end of the century, it had ceased to be a private residence.

In the early 20th Century, it became a lunatic asylum and during the First World War, it was occupied by the military. In peacetime, it was derelict until it was demolished in 1926.

As the hall came down, John Arnison, 14, was set to work on his first job cleaning bricks so that they could be re-used. Just three days after leaving school, John was struck by a joist thrown by a workman and killed.

Fragments of its walls and gardens remained into the early 1970s when it was cleared so that the housing estate – then Europe’s largest – could be built. The hall was probably where Brancepeth Close stands today, and there was a grand gazebo at the edge of the gardens, where Eggleston Close is now.

In 1988, a retail park was built nearby. It was, of course, named after 14-year-old John who had died 62 years earlier.

The Liddells’ other stately home, Ravensworth Castle, didn’t fare any better than Newton Hall. The family, who began as merchants in Newcastle before buying up coal-rich estates, had owned the castle at Gateshead since 1607, and in 1724, Sir Henry built a mansion within its walls which became the principal seat.

Several generations down this family tree, the Very Reverend Henry Liddell became Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria and Vice Chancellor of Oxford University where his young daughter, Alice, struck up an unlikely acquaintanceship with an undergraduate from Croft-on-Tees, Charles Dodgson. Their trips on the river in Oxford would become the starting point of Alice in Wonderland, that Dodgson wrote under the pen name of Lewis Carroll.

By the start of the 20th Century, Ravensworth Castle was showing signs of subsidence due to the Liddells’ own coalmining operation and they abandoned it in the 1930s, preferring the more stable ground of their Eslington estate in Northumberland. Fatally undermined, much of it was cleared in the 1950s, but outhouses still remain. An attempt by a BBC restoration programme 15 years ago to bring them back to life failed and so, apparently, they still look for a future.

OLD newspapers really do provide a fascinating snapshot of life as it was lived in our towns and villages. So elsewhere in the D&S Times of 150 years ago this week, an anonymous letter writer laid into the Reverend A Cumby, vicar of Scorton and headmaster of Scorton Grammar School who, with school buildings crumbling and its reputation in tatters, had been pensioned off by the charity on £100-a-year.

“Why?” asked the letterwriter who signed themselves Stella. “Whatever his merits as a classical scholar and gentleman were, they were nil as a schoolmaster.”

At Barnard Castle, reported the D&S, “an insect settled upon the hand of one of the workmen at Messrs Ullathorne’s factory, inflicting a severe bite. The insect proved to be a mosquito, and it probably found its way here in a bale of flax.”

However, elsewhere on the same page, the D&S reported that in West Hartlepool “a very large and undoubted specimen of the genuine Indian mosquito was caught in Stockton Street, and it is thought to be one of a large family supposed to have settled down there.”

Perhaps global warming was to blame, because on the Brettanby estate at Barton at noon, a 23-year-old harvester, Patrick Morn, complained of a pain in his head, lay down by a hedge and died within half-an-hour. His body was taken to the Plough Inn (where was the Plough Inn in Barton?) and the coroner returned “a verdict to the effect that deceased died from a sun-stroke”.

At Richmond, cricket club professional Mr H Stelling, of Northallerton, had gone bathing in the Swale with friends near Easby. “Not one of them had learnt the art of swimming,” said the D&S. “Mr Stelling ventured in deep water, and his comrades seeing him in danger, linked hands and thus made the attempt to rescue him. They failed to reach him. The body sunk, and it was an hour afterwards ere it could be got out.

“Mr Stelling was about thirty years of age, and was to be married in two or three days.”

There was similar tragedy in the Wear beside Witton Park Ironworks, where the water is mainly a shallow foot or so deep but plunges unexpectedly into 20ft pits.

“It was in one of these parts where the unsuspecting youths were bathing, frolicking about the water in the height of happiness, when a cry was heard. A lad had gone unsuspectingly into one of these deep holes about 15ft deep, and, being unable to swim, was drowning.

“A brave companion rushed to his rescue, but being also unable to swim, he could be of little or no service, and was himself at once in difficulties.

“The two unfortunate youths clutched each other with a firm grasp, and for a moment struggled, when they sank together and were no more seen.

“Their names were Evan Thomas and David Davis, each about 11 years of age, and both their fathers are in America.

“Some of the men from Witton Park Works were using their utmost endeavours, both in diving and grappling, to recover the bodies, but up to last night, their efforts had been without success.”