Services on the Tees Valley Railway ceased about 60 years ago. Tim Meacham, in the first of an occasional series of articles, delves into the history to relate how the line brought an influx of tourists and businesses to Cotherstone, also known as ‘Little Sunderland’
Publication of the book, A Ticket to Teesdale, by McCrickard and Teasdale has reawakened interest in the one-time branch line, the Tees Valley Railway, 60 years after all services ceased. A recent talk on the line in Cotherstone Village Hall attracted an audience of over 90.
Cotherstone gained its branch service 11 years after Barnard Castle had received its first train from Darlington in 1856. While Henry Pease was busily canvassing for the 1865 General Election he was approached by the people of Middleton-in-Teesdale to assist them in getting a railway to their village.
Always a man of action, Pease induced the North Eastern Railway Company to support The Tees Valley Railway Company, as the venture was to be known, and even to subscribe half of the £25,000 capital.
The local notary, Thomas Witham of Lartington Hall, stepped in to help and “not only aided with being a large subscriber, but agreed to undertake the duties and become chairman of the company”. The act was passed by Parliament on June 19, 1865, the same date as the first sod was cut by the Duke of Cleveland who owned a large portion of the land that the railway would cross.
Construction began and regular progress was reported throughout 1866. A bad winter however then slowed things down, while 1867 was also a frustrating year weather-wise, and it was February 1868 before a test train could run over the whole line. An inspection took place on May 12 before a public opening on the following day celebrated with food and festivities.
The line ran for seven and a half miles from Tees Valley Junction on Barney’s second railway, the South Durham & Lancashire Railway, to a point at Middleton-in-Teesdale on the far bank of the River Tees from the village centre.
The line did not retain its independence for long, being worked from the start by the North Eastern Railway which officially took it over for £25,188 in 1882.
So to Cotherstone, the first station where the line crossed the B6377 by a bridge now long removed.
The contract for providing Cotherstone station was let to Mr DP Appleby of Barnard Castle. The population of Cotherstone in 1851 had been 607, but by 1891 had climbed to 940. Part of this increase must have been staff for the new station – 15 (one station master, four signalmen, two porters, one clerk and seven labourers), most presumably living in the seven new houses making up the adjacent Station Terrace.
At number 1 lived Henry Parke, the original station master with his wife and five young children. Following Henry’s death in 1908 the long-serving William Lane was appointed. He stayed until May 1925 when the post was brought under the control of the Lartington station master on the main Kirkby Stephen line.
Thanks to the railway Cotherstone (spelt ‘Cotherston’ by the railway from 1906-1914) became known as ‘Little Sunderland’ (or even ‘The Rhine in Miniature’ as described in 1903!) as hordes of tourists descended by train on hot summer days, picnicked by the river, then went home to Wearside to face another six days hard labour.
The coming of the railway had transformed the village. Before it had been a self-contained rural community with nine shops. Now the railway brought tourism. The village began to be described as ‘a health resort’.
A tourist guide of 1911 advertises rooms to let with the benefit of a bathroom and a piano. Not only did the workers come for their holidays but many returned to retire here. As late as 1938, two of the eight daily trains up the Tees Valley line started at Sunderland and a third from Newcastle.
Yet the population increase by 1891 had another railway-connected cause. That year’s Cotherstone census names one George Yourdi, birthplace ‘Greece’. This was the man in charge of the dam project then underway at Hury (and afterwards Blackton). He went on to win national fame as engineer of the massive Elan Valley dams in Wales.
If we followed the Tees Valley line a mile or so west from Cotherstone station, we would have reached Scott’s Siding. By agreement of October 18, 1884, Walter Scott & Co put in a standard gauge siding in connection with the construction of the reservoirs, two and a half miles away to the west of the line.
The concrete, pipes etc for construction were brought here by rail, then taken on by road to the reservoir sites. This equipment included the rails and locomotives for a 3ft gauge construction railway which also served two local quarries. These locomotives actually steamed their own way for two and a half miles from Scott’s Siding to Hury over the most temporary of temporary railways – four lengths of track which were laid in front of the engines, which passed over them; the tracks were then lifted and relaid in front of the engines, and so on. A laborious procedure, but oh for a photograph!
The railway played its part in the Second World War. In 1940 and 1941 evacuees arrived in the village by train. About 160 boys from a school in Middlesbrough were sent to Teesdale, two being billeted with the Cotherstone station master.
“I remember the station platform suddenly full of people with the extra boys and girls and masters for the 8am train to Barnard Castle,” recalled one host family. “Every day the boys used the train to get to their school at The Bowes Museum. Mr Nottingham was Station Master, supported by Norman Franklin, and a part-time fellow from Barnard Castle who was so slow that we nicknamed him ‘Whippet-quick’.”
In 2006 nine of the boys, now aged about 80 paid a nostalgic visit to the village which had taken them in.
After the war, the heady days remained for a while at Cotherstone, yet ominously by 1950, the Sunderland Echo was lamenting that new-found local prosperity and industry had “robbed Cotherstone’s sandstone cottages and grey-slated houses of the sound of children’s laughter and baby squeakings”.
On February 5, 1954, the station was downgraded to the status of unstaffed halt, as well as losing its goods siding and, within ten years, the last passenger train called on Saturday, November 28, 1964. Closure to goods traffic followed on April 5, 1965, and the line was quickly lifted.
So ended Cotherstone’s association with the railway, just short of its centenary.
l Next time, Romaldkirk
