LOOKING back to when a community rallied round to support a couple whose house had been destroyed by fire in 2018.

Friends, family and strangers rolled up their sleeves as a project to renovate a family home after a devastating house fire got underway on January 20, 2018.

Volunteers cleared away the burnt mess and bad memories left by the arson attack in Park Parade, Spennymoor, in September 2017 and create a blank canvas for community project DIY SOS Spennymoor to start its renovation.

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Homeowners Tracy and Craig Poskett, who raised three children in their home of 13 years, did not have insurance and, accepting their mistake, feared returning home was impossible.

But David Goss, director of building and heating firm Concept 16, set up an appeal to get them back home by May 2018.

The clean-up operation on Saturday, January 20, 2018 was day one on site.

Mrs Poskett said: “We’d had promises before, but from that Thursday on it has been crazy. The support has been massive and the clean-up went amazing.”

Severe wintry weather caused disruption across the North-East and North Yorkshire as major routes were closed, thousands of homes lost power, almost 100 schools closed and key services were cancelled, in January 2018.

Ahead of several more days of freezing temperatures in some parts of the region, police urged motorists to only travel if essential following up to 30cms of snow.

A yellow weather warning for snow and ice was set to remain in place across most of the region, but the Met Office said temperatures in places such as Consett, Bishop Auckland and Hawes, in Wensleydale, were set to dip as low as -4 degrees.

A teenage history student helped reunite a medal with the family of the First World War soldier who earned it, in January 2018.

Sharp-eyed Kieran Lowery, 15, spotted the letters spelling out ‘Private JA Hewson’ engraved on the side of a copper and bronze Inter-Allied Victory Medal brought into class during a lesson on the Ludendorff offensive.

With the help of teacher Ryan Curran, the class, at Delta Independent School, in Consett, set about finding out more about him.

Searches of war records helped them conclude it had belonged to Joseph Albert Hewson, who was born in Cumberland in 1898 and signed up aged 18.

By a strange twist of fate, he took part in the Hundred Days’ Offensive and the British counter-attack, battles the group had been learning about.

Kieran, from Pelton, near Chester-le-Street, said: “I saw the medal and started turning it around and saw the initials on it.

“It is 100 years old. It is a bit mad to think about. I like history and love learning about the war.

“I wouldn’t want to go and do it though. It would have been scary for him.”

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The medal, which shows a full-length, winged figure of Victory, had been bought as a Christmas present for Mr Curran from Elliott Military in Tow Law by his fiancé, Laura Bowman.

But when the class learned more about it, Kieran suggested tracking down Private Hewson’s family so they could return it.

After more work, using an ancestry website, they were able locate Mr Hewson’s great niece, Peg Johnson, who lives in Alberta, Canada.