Hidden History - North East

  Plate Layer’s Hut The Deerness Valley Way Railway Path runs for nearly 14 km from Broompark to Crook, following the route of the former railway, which closed in 1964 1 . There is now little to show of its industrial past, as with many parts of the Deerness valley, any such heritage has been removed or buried. Shortly after leaving Waterhouses, the path climbs steadily until it crosses the Wolsingham road. Along the track, a gate off to the left leads to an overgrown field that slopes steeply down to Stanley Beck*. Lying close to the stream are the ruins of an old building that still retains its original layout, consisting of two rooms and a small door. According to Durham Cathedral's Archaeologist and local resident Norman Emery, the cottage belonged to a ‘Platelayer’. Early in the 19th century, railway lines were constructed using ‘plateways’,  L-shaped rails which were designed to carry coal trains. Although early 19th century railway designers develo...

Thanks to Heather, we visited the sites of the camps at Healeyfield, Stanhope and Eastgate. Here are the videos we took. Thanks also to the folk at Dene Howl farm for showing us the right location of the Healeyfield site; I was half a kilometre out! Healeyfield Stanhope    Eastgate

In his excellent paper 'Landscapes of Internment: British Prisoner of War Camps and the Memory of the First World War' *, Professor Tim Grady emphasises that "Britain's memory culture" concentrated on the British troops that fought on the Western Front and forgot the contribution made by German POWs to our industrial heritage through their work on land drainage, river clearance, agriculture, mining, quarrying, railway maintenace etc. Also forgotten are the inevitable interactions between the POWs and their British co-workers and local residents. *Journal of BritishStudies 58 (July2019):543–564.doi:10.1017/jbr.2019.7© The North American Conference on BritishStudies, 2019