Echo Memories: Smoke and coke as canal loses out to the railways

At his feet, a young Dixon played - probably sketching in a childish way some of his father's more imaginative schemes.

But it was a generation of Dixons, as then unthought of, who would finally solve the transport problem of the fell - and it would be with a railway, not a canal.

George Dixon (1731 to 1785), as Echo Memories told last week, was the visionary who dug a stretch of canal on the fell in 1766.

Although no evidence survives, he probably also rigged up a remarkable sequence of ditches and troughs, of railways and tramways, of pulleys, trolleys and rolleys, and of ratchets, widgets and gadgets, which connected the canal on the top with the River Gaunless at the bottom.

The Duke of Cleveland, his landlord, was not impressed with his ideas, so they came to nought.

But his son, John Dixon (1762 to 1816), persevered. John drew up plans that showed how a cargo of coal could be dropped from a great height using only rails and water - and a great deal of ingenuity.

For the best part of 50 years, George and John tried to persuade whoever would listen that water was the best means of transport, but in 1810, rail emerged as the favourite.

John's son, also called John (1796 to 1865), helped it off the drawing board. John junior was born in Garden House, Cockfield, and like all good Dixons was trained in the rudiments of surveying.

But by the time he was 20, he had left the village to seek fame and fortune in Darlington, where he worked as a clerk in Backhouses' Bank in High Row.

The Backhouses were in league with the Peases in a fantastical scheme to create the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR). While they were still thinking along the lines of horsepower, Dixon rode to Killingworth, in Northumberland, to see what a fellow called George Stephenson was doing with steampower.

So impressed was the young man that he arranged for Stephenson to meet Edward Pease.

That meeting took place in Pease's house, in Northgate, Darlington (today a takeaway), on April 19, 1821, and it convinced Pease that steampower was the way forward.

Two months later, Pease appointed Stephenson to survey the line. In turn, Stephenson appointed Dixon as his deputy.

Soon Stephenson was involved in every railway project in the land, and young Dixon was left to survey most of the line and to supervise its building.

Even before the S&DR was opened, Stephenson had Dixon working on two other projects: the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the Whitstable and Canterbury Railway.

Dixon went to work for the Liverpool railway for 20 years before returning to Darlington as consulting engineer to the S&DR. He made his home in Belle Vue, a mansion that still stands in Coniscliffe Road.

So pleased was the S&DR with Dixon's work that in 1857 it named one of its new engines Belle Vue in his honour.

Dixon died in Belle Vue in 1865. As well as his surveying, he was noted for inventing the steam whistle.

"Mr Dixon might have attained even higher eminence and been more connected than he was with the railway committees and Parliamentary investigations had his ambitions been stronger," said his obituary in the Darlington Telegraph. "But he chose rather to walk in the path of quiet duty."

FROM its inception, the S&DR planned a branch line into the Gaunless Valley to collect coal from the collieries.

Initially the line was to go to Evenwood, but in 1824 the Reverend William Luke Prattmann, of the Congregational Church, in Barnard Castle, married the daughter of Robert Lodge and changed the direction of the railway.

Mr Lodge owned the rights to the mines at Butterknowle, and Mr Prattmann owned shares in the S&DR. The priest kicked up an unholy fuss at shareholders' meetings about the branch line going to Evenwood. Consequently, in 1824, it was diverted along the course of the River Gaunless to terminate at a farm called Haggerleases, which, conveniently, was at the foot of the bank below Butterknowle.

In 1825, John Dixon started building the first half-mile of the line from the Brusselton incline towards Butterknowle. But the S&DR ran into serious money problems, and work on all branch lines stopped. Lines were also planned to Croft, and to Black Boy at Eldon, in the Dene Valley.

Work restarted on the Haggerleases branch line in July 1828, and the first part along the Gaunless Valley to Cockfield Fell was opened on May 1, 1830.

The second part, from the fell to Haggerleases, was more difficult because the line had to cross the Gaunless at an angle of 27 degrees. In its day, the "skew bridge" was nothing short of an engineering miracle - although today it is rather forgotten about at the foot of the fell.

Dog walkers, though, can still read its plaque, which says that it was designed by Thomas Storey and built by James Wilson, of Pontefract, in 1830. It cost £420, and the second part of the line was formally opened on October 1, 1830, with a procession of four horse-drawn coaches that had come all the way from Darlington.

Soon all manner of ingenious trackways and ropeways were running down the side of Cockfield Fell to deliver coal to the line. Today, deep ravines can be seen down the side of the fell where these roads went.

The line also collected coal from collieries at Butterknowle, Woodland, Norwood, Ramshaw and Evenwood.

In 1834, when a Mr West started a service from St Helen Auckland, passengers were able to travel on the line, but the Haggerleases' great problem was that it was separated from the rest of the S&DR by Brusselton Incline. That meant its wagons had to be hauled by horses to the incline, dragged up it by a stationary engine on the top and lowered down the other side, where they could be collected by a steam engine.

All that changed in 1856, when the Shildon Tunnel was built under the Brusselton bank. Horses were banished from the Haggerleases, and passengers from Butterknowle could travel in comfort to faraway, exotic place such as Darlington.

But Cockfield Fell is such a remarkable place, as regular readers will know, that it could not make do with just one railway line. It had to have two - and we shall deal with the second in a future instalment.

IN those days, Cockfield Fell was a complete industry. The mines on the top of the fell fed the coal down to the river valley, which was lined with circular coke ovens.

The remains of hundreds of these ovens can still be seen lining the fellside.

Coal was fed into the top of the ovens then lit. Over the next three days, it became white hot, and all its impurities, including sulphur, were belched out of the top.

After the heating process was complete, the ovens were opened and the white-hot coals were raked out and immediately doused with water from the Gaunless. What remained was called coke, which would burn hotter and for longer than coal, without so much smoke the next time it was lit. Along came a train on the Haggerleases branch line and carried the coke off to market.

STEAM engines, coke ovens and coal dust - Cockfield Fell 150 years ago must have been one of the smelliest places on Earth.

In 1854, a Stockton and Darlington Times reporter was dispatched along the Haggerleases branch line to this strange frontier land to sample the atmosphere.

He wrote: "A short ride brings us into the midst of the collieries. Shafts are seen on all sides and the distant rattle of the coal as it falls into the wagons, comes sailing on the wings of the wind from all directions.

"In some instances, the coal is brought from the pit down an inclined tramway in the same tubs which are filled by the miners, to the depot, where wagons are filled. These wagons either convey it to the coke ovens or further down the railway for transit.

"The atmosphere near the mines is impregnated with smoke, and the sensation to a stranger is very uncomfortable and chokey from the great quantity of black dust which fills the air.

"This notwithstanding, many of the inhabitants are remarkably robust and live to a good old age. We can vouch that many of the lads and lasses look charming."

HOPEFULLY, the Echo Memories series will have enthused you enough to venture out on to Cockfield Fell.

There will be no better time than over the bank holiday weekend, from August 24 to 26.

The Gaunless Valley History Trust is holding an exhibition - with a working model railway - of photographs, maps and documents in Butterknowle Village Hall each day from 11am to 3pm.

On Saturday, August 24, there will be a guided walk on the fell, leaving the visitor centre in the Slack, Butterknowle, at 11am.

* The Weardale Railway Trust's photographic exhibition of its line opens tomorrow, at the Discovery Centre, Bishop Auckland, and runs until August 31.