A WEIGHTS and measures inspector was threatened with a 56lb weight in 1957 when he investigated whether a Darlington door-to-door coalman was delivering the correct weight.

As a result, the Evening Despatch reported that the coalman William Evers, 21, whose address was given as “Lancaster Site, Croft Airport”, appeared in court charged with assault and battery.

The report of the court case appeared in our reproduction page in Memories 603, and we asked for information about where Mr Evers lived.

“As a boy in Croft, I remember talk of the "squatters" living in the former airmen’s quarters up at Dalton, as we then called the airfield,” says John Wearmouth.

Croft aerodrome – which is close to the village of Dalton-on-Tees – opened in October 1941. From 1943 was a base for the Royal Canadian Air Force. It was mainly a satellite field to Middleton St George.

The Northern Echo:

Pictures of Croft airfield are pretty rare, but this shows a 4,000lb 'Cookie' bomb going off after a Lancaster bomber crashed shortly after take-off at the aerodrome in 1945

“When I was a student, I had a holiday job at Christmas and during the summer from 1956 to 1958 at Croft post office, on the riverfront,” continues John. “I delivered post on a pedal bike up the hill to Dalton village and then on to Eryholme Lane end and Dalton Gates before circuiting the aerodrome and visiting each of the surrounding ring of farms.

“To each of those farms I would infuriatingly have to deliver a copy of The Northern Echo even if there was no other "proper" post!

“I made had a 360 degree ride around the airfield but always the wind seemed to be in my face. My last stop then was Halnaby lodge before returning to the Post Office.”

The Canadians left Croft in 1945 and much of the airfield became derelict although the runways were used for private flying and for motor racing.

Nationally after the war, there was a housing shortage, as no new homes had been for six years and tens of thousands of properties had been destroyed in air raids. Plus there were four million young men and women who were being demobbed needed somewhere to live.

In the summer of 1946, there was a national, and largely spontaneous, squatter movement. People moved en masse into disused military establishments and took up residence. By October 1946, about 46,000 people were living in 1,811 camps.

This happened at Croft where the airmen had had at least four housing sites of concrete prefabs built just beyond the airfield’s perimeter. To the airmen these sites were known as “Communal Site No 1” etc, but to the civilians who squatted in them, they were named after wartime aeroplanes: there was Lancaster site, where our coalman lived, and also a Wellington site.

The newcomers on these sites formed a “squatters committee” to prove they were not lawbreakers. The committee collected £100 so that when the day came for someone in authority to demand rent, they would be able to pay. In late 1946, Darlington council discovered it had become the relevant authority and, to avoid a scene, it thought £100 would just about cover what it was owed.

Local councils were quite grateful that people were prepared to squat in wartime accommodation rather than join the long queue for social housing.

Therefore, in February 1947, Darlington council spent £4,106 on work to make the sites more permanent and safe for families. However, on June 27, 1948, in Communal Site No 1, eight-year-old Brian Harris drowned in an airfield water tank before it could be filled in.

Slowly during the 1950s, as building materials became available, squatters were able to move out of the wartime units into new council houses. Many from Croft ended up in the new estate on the edge of Barton, but some people remained on the airfield.

“I delivered post to people living on the Lancaster site (maybe even to the defendant),” says John. “By my time in 1958, I think that most of the original squatters had moved away. Many of the huts were derelict but some were still occupied.

“As a shy young lad, I recall the sites being somewhat intimidating and confusing due to a lack of numbers on the doors, and often a large dog or two to keep you on your toes.”

When the remains of the airfield at Croft were auctioned on April 16, 1962, all the squatters had moved on.

ONE of the farms that was sold in 1962 was East Vince Moor. He was apparently bought by a farmer who had a sideline in breeding Border Collie dogs. It is said that one of his dogs, born on May 1, 1971, was sold to the BBC. He was named Shep and became famous as John Noakes’ side kick on Blue Peter. Shep was an excitable hound – hence Noakes' catchphrase "Get down, Shep" – and stayed on the show until Noakes left in 1978, although he starred in Go With Noakes until 1980. Shep died in 1987.

Can anyone tell us if this most famous of children's TV animals was a Croft dog?

The Northern Echo: John Noakes sitting back-to-back with Shep, the Blue Peter dog, in the Blue Peter studio in Television Centre (S500/77/1)..

AT a recent talk in Tudhoe, we were told that Croft’s most famous resident, Lewis Carroll, had a favourite hawthorn tree under which he used to sit and write. The tree, apparently, was on the Hurworth side of the East Coast Main Line, and its location was being pointed out by locals 30 years ago. Can anyone tell us where Lewis Carroll’s tree is?