Last month, I followed the route of the disused railway from Ferryhill to Hartlepool. The first day of spring found me at Ferryhill again; but this time I would head in the opposite direction.
Return to Ground Zero
It was no coincidence that I found myself back at the site of the former Ferryhill railway station. Ferryhill was the focus of an intense railway network. And today I would head for a rival rail nexus, just six miles to the west: Bishop Auckland. This extract from the 1934 London North Eastern Railway (LNER) timetable handbook shows the rail network in this part of County Durham:
Two busy junctions
The railway lines on this map are coloured red. The red numbers next to the lines denote timetable numbers. The LNER handbook also contained bus routes and timetables, coloured and numbered in black. Ferryhill can be seen at centre left, with lines radiating in all directions. Bishop Auckland, with its own web of railways, can be seen bottom left. The red line connecting these would be the subject of today’s walk. But the map confirms that it’s not a straight journey. Ferryhill sits in a gap in the Raisby Formation, a 200 feet thick limestone escarpment. To get to Bishop Auckland, the railway first had to travel north through the gap for a mile and a half, then swing left through 90° to head west.
A long walk
So I had a ten mile walk ahead of me. In the event, the distance turned out to be slightly longer. The start of the day brought me back to the bridge over Mainsforth Road. Ferryhill station was located immediately below this bridge, and stretched out on either side of it. The East Coast Main Line (ECML) was closed for maintenance, and the line was eerily quiet. Looking northwards, the 500-feet high chimney stack of Thrislington Quarry can be seen in the background. It dominates the local landscape.
It’s complicated
The map below shows the extent of the day’s walk. It also demonstrates how King Coal once ruled County Durham. Collieries, and the railway sidings and freight lines that connected them, dominated the countryside. There were mountainous spoil heaps too. A lot of industrial archaeology has been landscaped away, but there’s still plenty to find.
Retracing my steps
I set off towards my next disused station site, Spennymoor. But, as with Day 1 of my walk from Ferryhill to Hartlepool, the first section of the former route is a live railway. So, again, I headed north up Duncombe Bank. The bank levels out and becomes Cleves Avenue. The entrance to Ferryhill Carrs Nature Reserve can be found opposite the junction with Wood Lane.
Ferryhill Carrs
Just as on that first walk, I made my way down to the valley floor, then headed north beside the ECML. This is where my route diverged from the previous one. Last time, I headed east towards Hartlepool. You can read about this walk, which took place over two days here and here. This time, I would be going west. The photo below shows the line to Bishop Auckland peeling away from the main line, and curving westwards. I was now on the route of the Byers Green Branch of the Clarence Railway, dating back to 1841.
Ascent
The line climbed away from the valley. The track bed can be seen to the right of the photo below. Another former railway can be seen to the left. These lines formed a junction behind the camera. As passenger and freight trains headed between Ferryhill and Bishop Auckland, they used the right hand route. But, after the Clarence Railway was subsumed into the North Eastern Railway (NER), the latter company built a line which would allow coal trains to avoid the ECML. The track bed on the left of the photo is what remains of that line. The line bridged under the main line, then merged with the Ferryhill to Hartlepool line near West Cornforth. But the line didn’t last long; by 1900, Ordnance Survey maps were labelling it as a disused railway.
No way through
I headed west along the track bed, and exited Ferryhill Carrs nature reserve into Cleves Avenue.
Level Crossing
Having reached the site of the former level crossing on Cleves Avenue, I prepared to pick up my route on the other side of the road. But there was a problem. Despite two public footpaths being shown on the Ordnance Survey map, there were no waymarkings. I tried two farm entrances but the gates were closed. One of them was welded shut. I had no choice but to head back to Ferryhill, to try to access the trackbed of the railway at another point.
Diversion
I head south along Cleves Avenue, back to the first entrance to Ferryhill Carrs nature reserve. I turned right along Wood Lane, took another right on to Durham Road, and emerged on to the A167 Great North Road. I crossed the road and entered the woodland on the other side, next to the Dean & Chapter Industrial Estate. The industrial estate is named after the neighbouring Dean & Chapter Colliery.
A walk in the forest
I was following in the footsteps of the miner and painter Norman Cornish, who walked this route, from Ferryhill ‘village’ to the pit, for 20 years. The woodland is all that remains of a mountainous colliery spoil heap that once dominated the landscape. I headed downhill along the edge of the woods until I found level ground. I was back on the track bed of the Ferryhill to Bishop Auckland railway. I continued westwards, past the site of the railway sidings that once served the Dean & Chapter Colliery. The pit closed 60 years ago, and the industrial hustle and bustle has been replaced by birdsong on this forest walk.
Curses, foiled again
A twenty-minute walk brought me into Spennymoor, but the track bed came to a sudden halt. The closure of the Dean & Chapter Colliery in 1966 also brought the end of the railway through. Since then, several modern road realignments have destroyed much of the track bed.
Sustenance
I skirted along the edge of the housing estate, then picked up the track bed of the railway again, where it forms a subway under the A688 road. But, soon after emerging from the subway on to South Street, the railway route disappears again, this time beneath a large roundabout. By now, despite it only being mid March, the sun had become a demon. I picked up Spennymoor High Street from the roundabout, and headed into Quinn’s Inn for some essential fluid replenishment.
Quinn’s Inn is an Irish pub.
Spennymoor Town Hall
Just along the High Street from Quinn’s Inn, I took a photo of Spennymoor Town Hall, completed in 1916 in the Edwardian Baroque style.
Spennymoor railway station
I returned back along the High Street. Nothing now remains of Spennymoor railway station, which was located just east of the roundabout site. The first railway station at Spennymoor was a terminus, served by market day trains to Byers Green. The through station opened 1878. Regular passenger services ceased in 1952, but the Ferryhill to Bishop Auckland railway remained open for football specials and summer excursions until the line closed in 1966.
This is a photo of one of the station’s enamel ‘running in’ boards, taken just before the demolition of the platforms. It’s picked out in the tangerine colour scheme of British Railways’ North Eastern Region.
Costa del Spennymoor
The Spennymoor station pub, the North Eastern Hotel, was named after the railway company that served the region for 78 years. The BBC’s ‘Nationwide’ programme visited the hotel in 1973, featuring an eccentric plan to use the hotel as a base for Spanish tourists visiting Spennymoor. Reader, it never happened
The golden age
This excerpt below, from an early 20th Century summer timetable, shows the infrequency of trains on the route between Ferryhill and Bishop Auckland. Services only lasted from 1885 until 1939. But one notable feature was the summer Sunday trains from Bishop Auckland to Redcar. The Redcar train ran via West Hartlepool, a slower and more circuitous route than the direct line via the former Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR). But this was a holidaymaker train, which also set down in Seaton Carew, so the passengers wouldn’t have been in a great hurry.
Getting back on track
I returned along the High Street, crossed the roundabout, headed along Clyde Terrace for about 100 metres, then turned right on to Rosa Street. A ‘Norman Cornish Trail’ information board tells of the artist and his work, including a painting of the nearby school.
The school itself is next to the information board.
The Auckland Way
Just beyond the school, ! regained the track bed of the Ferryhill to Bishop Auckland railway. The Auckland Way Railway Path would take me all the way to my destination, more than four miles away. Within no time at all, I was in a linear park, surrounded by parkland and greenery. Durham County doesn’t have a great reputation for scenery, but a visit to the Auckland Way would dispel any myths about it being grim up north.
Primavera
It was 21 March, the first day of spring, and the blossom was out along the route of the Ferryhill to Bishop Auckland railway.
World of water
Natural springs here feed Hagg Beck, which flows alongside the track bed for about 500 metres, before meandering northwards, then emptying into the River Wear just the other side of Spennymoor. Volunteers have recently planted a reed bed here.
Byers Green railway station
About half an hour after leaving Spennymoor, I reached the site of the former Byers Green station. Byers Green was first connected into the rail network in 1841, when the Clarence Railway built its ‘City of Durham’ branch from the main line at Stillington. This branch split into two north of Ferryhill. The ‘Sherburn’ branch headed north east to Quarrington via Coxhoe. It never reached Sherburn, nor the City of Durham, its intended terminus. But the real intention of the Clarence Railway was to break into County Durham’s coal territory. It could then ship the product down to Port Clarence on the River Tees. In this respect, the City of Durham branch was an unqualified success.
An afterthought
The first station opened at Byers Green in 1845, with a market day service to Spennymoor. This station was on the spur that served the local colliery. Then, forty years after the line opened, Byers Green village received a new railway station. The NER, which had inherited the Byers Green branch, extended the line to Bishop Auckland in 1885, and opened stations here and at Coundon. Despite closing in 1939, the station platform is still intact.
The Land of the Prince Bishops
The railway then swept south into Auckland Park, home of the powerful Prince Bishops, rulers of the County Palatine of Durham. Their residence, Auckland Palace, can be found on the other side of the park.
A grumpy bishop
When the railway was being planned at Auckland Park, the then BIshop of Durham, The Right Reverend Joseph Lightfoot, is said to have objected to the view of the new railway from the park. So he insisted that an avenue of trees be planted along the bridge, either side of the carriageway, to screen his view of the line. The unique “Bishops’s Bridge” had to be built to double the usual width. Crazy, right? Posterity is divided on whether Joseph Lightfoot was a good bishop or a bad bishop. Anyway this is a view of his bridge, framed by a parallel one. Those trees are actually growing on the bridge; it’s not an optical illusion.
Going South
The railway swept from west to south here, on the western edge of the Raisby escarpment. The navvies had to cut deep into the dolomite. The stonemasons who followed them built a series of substantial bridges. The quality of their work is first-rate.
Underbridge
Even in places where their work was unlikely to be seen, the craftsmen did an excellent job. This underbridge was built to allow a farm track to pass beneath the railway.
Coundon railway station
The line emerged from the cutting and began to curve westwards. Coundon station was built on the curve. The station was situated a long way from the village it served, didn’t see many passengers, and it didn’t last long. It opened along with this stretch of line in 1885, and closed in 1939. But the station building survives as a private residence. Great work by the NER architect.
The first cut is the deepest
The track bed then heads into the final cutting before Bishop Auckland. These artificial cliffs can’t have changed much since they were hewn in 1885.
Bishop Auckland
The track bed enters an urban zone now, but you wouldn’t know it. Just as at Spennymoor, the former railway has created a green corridor, which is a haven for wildlife.
Bracks Farm
After 4.4 miles, the Auckland Way path comes to an end at Brack’s Farm on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland. There’s a car park for footpath users, just off the A688.
One last quest
The track bed is lost under new housing for the next 200 metres. After this, the line from Ferryhill merged with the extension of the S&DR from Shildon to Bishop Auckland. But I decided on one last attempt to visit the former railway before heading for home. I followed a path north through the new Brack’s Farm housing estate, entered Bishop Auckland Town Cemetery, then headed down a steep ravine to the River Gaunless.
Wilderness
The cemetery is, in effect, an 18-acre mature woodland. Bishop Auckland is lucky to have so many green spaces. But I was on a quest for railway artefacts. I headed south, climbing away from the river to the edge of the cemetery.
Junction
A green fence marks the cemetery boundary. The working railway from Bishop Auckland to Shildon can be seen in the background. But, between the railway and the fence, the track bed of the line from Ferryhill is hidden in the undergrowth. The two lines formed a junction about 100 metres away from the camera.
The search continues
This was a rough and muddy track, but I finally found the second artefact. Eighteen years after the founding of the S&DR, in 1843, the line was extended to Bishop Auckland. To reach the town, the engineers had to cross the ravine of the River Gaunless. They did so by building a massive embankment, with a culvert cut through it to accommodate the river. I followed the track along the foot of the embankment, then crossed the river where the fence can be seen in the photo below. I scrambled down and took a picture of the culvert.
Time for home
I exited the cemetery into South Church Road, then crossed the Asda car park towards Newgate Street. Okay, Bishop Auckland isn’t ALL greenery. Then it was down Bob Hardisty Drive to the railway station.
A railway nexus
As I mentioned at the start, Bishop Auckland was a substantial railway junction and freight hub back in the day. An information board next to the station building tells of the three signal boxes that were needed to control traffic around the vast sprawl of a station.
Visiting the Ferryhill to Bishop Auckland railway
I travelled from Teesside to Ferryhill via the Arriva X22 service, changing to the https://hodgsonsbuses.com/ at Sedgefield to continue to Ferryhill. I returned home to Teesside from Bishop Auckland by train, via the “Bishop Line”, which goes as far as Saltburn-by-the-Sea. I used Ordnance Survey Landranger Map 93 (Middlesbrough) for navigation. However, some rights of way in the Ferryhill area appear to have been tampered with, and some short diversions may be needed. Some of the terrain is rough, and walking boots are recommended. The route to the River Gaunless culvert is challenging. In contrast, the Auckland Way heading west from Spennymoor is well-maintained, and would be an excellent walk for anyone who doesn’t fancy the whole trek.
