I wrote recently about Durham and Teesside’s forgotten railway, the Clarence, and its rivalry with its more illustrious neighbour, the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR). You can read about it here. The S&DR’s place in posterity is assured but the Clarence, not so much. It wasn’t built as a passenger railway, and no famous trains ran along it. But, in a time span of nearly 200 years, it has undergone several freight booms.
Expansion after 1833
Soon after opening, the Clarence opened several branches to the north to access more of the lucrative Durham coal mines. Quarrington, Chilton Pit and Byers Green were reached over the next few years. In 1840 the Stockton and Hartlepool Railway (SHR) was built, branching off from the Clarence at Billingham and serving Victoria Dock in Hartlepool, allowing coal to be exported directly to the North Sea instead of having to navigate the river Tees.
The great railway that never was
But Ralph Ward Jackson, owner of the SHR, had bigger plans. By 1853, he had merged the SHR, the Clarence and the HWHDC into the West Hartlepool Harbour and Railway Company (WHH&R). By then, John Vaughan had discovered ironstone in the Eston Hills, and Ward Jackson began to look south of the Tees, setting his eyes on the next mineral boom.
After the Gold Rush
The S&DR had been quick to exploit the ironstone discovery in Eston. Within a year of John Vaughan’s Eureka moment in 1850, they’d built the Eston Branch Railway from South Bank to the gold rush settlement of California at the foot of the hills, transporting iron ore to Vaughan’s ironworks in Middlesbrough. But, just as the Clarence Railway had challenged the S&DR’s coal monopoly twenty years earlier, Ward Jackson wanted to break their ironstone monopoly too. He teamed up with a group of landowners to found the Cleveland Railway.
Cleveland Railway
The Cleveland Railway would initially connect several Cleveland ironstone mines to the river Tees at Normanby Jetty. This would be followed by a bridge across the river between South Bank and Port Clarence, connecting the Cleveland Railway to the WHH&R, including the Clarence. The S&DR’s blood ran cold at the prospect, and they soon prepared to kill the link at any cost. Firstly, they tried to block the railway in parliament then, when that failed, they tried to prevent the Cleveland from crossing their line at South Bank. The S&DR eventually allowed an overbridge, and the Cleveland railway was completed in 1861, extending to 15 miles to Skelton in East Cleveland.
The Battle of the Tees
But the S&DR weren’t done. They won the final battle, preventing the WHH&R’s attempt to bridge the Tees and connect the two railways. As the WHH&R tried to build a jetty on the river, tugs from S&DR allies The Tees Conservancy Commission clashed with their barges, and the police were called to restore order. The WHH&R gave up on their bridge. Wagons of ironstone could be ferried across the river, but could never move the volume that a railway would have. The railways on both sides of the river suffered from a lack of through traffic, and Teesside lost the benefit of a rail connection which would have proved its worth to this day. The following year, the WHH&R got into financial difficulty and Ralph Ward Jackson resigned. Parts of the Cleveland railway closed within 12 years. Much of it is lost now, but the eastern section of the route survives as part of the freight railway between Saltburn and Boulby mine.
Electric pioneers
Despite ceasing to exist as a separate railway, the route of the Clarence Railway continued to provide a valuable route for coal movements. The WHHR was subsumed into the North Eastern Railway (NER) in 1865. The NER was an innovative company, one of the first to appreciate the benefits of electrification. In 1916, the NER electrified the 18-mile route from Shildon to Newport in Middlesbrough, about half of which occupied the former Clarence Railway.
The Shildon to Newport electrified route
The Shildon to Newport route occupied the former S&DR between Shildon and Simpasture junction, then the Clarence Railway between Simpasture and Carlton West Junction on the outskirts of Stockton. Here it followed a chord south on to the Castle Eden Railway, which is now the Castle Eden Walkway. The trackbed of the chord can be seen in this photo, sloping down to the footpath from the left.
The route ran south past Hardwick, Fairfield and Hartburn, then bridged Hartburn Lane. The bridge has been demolished, but the embankments can be seen on either side of the road.
The line then reached Bowesfield junction, squeezing in between the Durham Coast line to the left and the S&DR to the right. This can be seen in the following photo, where I’m standing on the track bed of the Shildon/Newport route. The train on the right is occupying the S&DR. The Durham Coast route trails in from the left behind the phone mast:
The route continued along the former S&DR route to Erimus marshalling yard, adjacent to Newport Bridge in Middlesbrough. A map of the line can be seen here:
A backward step
As coal traffic declined during the 1930s recession, the NER’s successor company, the London and North East Railway, declined to renew the overhead line, and the Shildon to Newport route ceased to be electrified in 1935, after less than 20 years. Almost 90 years later, Teesside is one of the largest urban areas in the UK without any electrified railway lines.
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)
The next lease of life for the former Clarence Railway was the decision by the Ministry of Munitions to build a Government Nitrogen Factory in Billingham. After the First World War ended, the need for munitions was reduced, and the factory was abandoned. The site was bought by Brunner Mond (later to become part of ICI) in 1920, and developed into the Billingham Manufacturing Plant to make fertilizers. The Billingham site developed at an almost exponential rate, and by 1930 it was the largest factory in the British Empire, eventually extending to over 1,000 acres and employing over 15,000 people. The site was served by an intense internal rail network, based on a branch from the Clarence Railway into the East Sidings next to Belasis Avenue.
Looking for clues
None of the ICI Billingham rail network is in use now, but a lot of it remains in place. However this is still a working industrial plant, and there’s no public access. I had a walk around the boundary to see what I could find.
Cassel Works
The ICI Cassel Works, south of the main plant, was linked to it by a railway under New Road. The only clue to the existence of this link line is a forlorn pipeline bridge which crossed the line next to the road bridge. Further along New Road, the remains of a level crossing can be found at the road entrance to the works, with the rails embedded into the concrete.
Haverton Hill Road
Turning left to Haverton Hill Road, the line to the fertilizer works headed under Haverton Hill Road. The track bed has been lost to brambles and gorse. The famous ICI Nitram Tower can be seen in the distance on the right of the photo below, with its less illustrious younger brother to the left. On the other side of the road, a well-preserved section of track can be found. It doesn’t lead anywhere now, and it’s a mystery how it remains in such good condition. If anybody knows why it’s here, please put your answer on a postcard and send it to the usual address.
Salt works
Continuing eastwards, another freight line passed under Haverton Hill Road, connecting the ICI salt works to the river Tees. The track bed is heavily overgrown and can’t be seen from the bridge but, further on, the line crossed under the Clarence Railway. This ‘rail over rail’ bridge is extant and can be found at the back of the Haverton Hill Hotel. The two lines were then a chord on the other side of the bridge.
Belasis Lane railway station
On my previous visit I had been unable to obtain a photo of this station site. But the second time around I ventured into the Discipline Business Park and took two pics. The first is of the footbridge that led from the red bridge on Belasis Avenue. The footbridge looks as though it may have crossed freight sidings here, but there’s no record of them. The staircase down to the platform is well preserved but overgrown. The treads are overgrown with moss and lichen, and may not have seen footsteps in sixty years.
The decline of King Coal
Two million tonnes of coal was brought to ICI Billingham by rail each year, and much of the manufactured products, dominated by fertilizers, were exported via rail too. But ICI switched their power generation from coal to natural gas as North Sea gas became available at the end of the 1960s, and the coal traffic disappeared.
War Dividend
In 1941, The Ministry of War directed the construction of the Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) in Aycliffe, adjacent to the Clarence Railway. The ROF mainly manufactured artillery shells, and went on to employ 17,000 workers, mainly women, known to German propagandist Lord Haw Haw as the ‘little angels of Aycliffe’. The site brought much traffic to the Clarence Railway, and also the former S&DR railway on the other side of the plant.
The decline of the Clarence Railway
The ROF closed within months of war’s end in December 1945. Then, the west Durham coalfields that had spawned the railway became exhausted one by one. The section of the Clarence Railway between Simpasture Junction at Newton Aycliffe and Stillington Junction closed in 1963. The section between Stillington junction and Norton West Junction survives as a freight route between Teesside and Ferryhill but it is lightly used, seeing only about 3 or 4 trains per day. The line between Norton and Billingham fares better, with both freight and passenger trains, including between Sunderland and London Kings Cross. The route between Billingham Junction and Port Clarence is freight-only now, with only occasional services to the Navigator oil terminal. But these were reduced even further when bitumen trains to and from the Ribble terminal near Preston ceased on 30 November 2024.
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