When Shotley Bridge was a thriving town – c 1905
Shotley Bridge and Benfieldside School 1900 Shotley Bridge was a metropolitan, a proper town, a thriving place. The War and the recession and the rest put paid to that; it’s never been the same. Never...
View ArticleWilliam Lubbock – Photographer – Shotley Bridge 1902-1910
Fig. 1. Shotley Bridge, above the Flour Mill. The boys on the road John Arthur Wilson (Jack) and William Nixon Wilson (Billy) William Lubbock – Photographer 1902 There was a teacher called Lubbock;...
View ArticleThe Spa Fields Fair, Shotley Bridge and the fatal accident involving a...
Spa Fields Fair and the Char-a-banc 1902 Every year there was a fair down at the Spa Fields by the river The Spa was noted for its waters which came out of the rocks by the swings; it was icy cold. The...
View ArticleCanon Ross Lewin looked after the Church
Canon Ross Lewin 1902 There was Tatty Walton’s the Grocer’s and Addison’s the Newsagents. These supermarkets have killed all of that. The pubs were the ‘Kings Head’ and ‘The Commercial’. Canon Lewin...
View Article1908 Olympics
My late grandfather, Jack Wilson MM, clearly remembered Key events that impinged on his life from the Relief of Mafeking in 1902, celebrated in the fringes of the British Empire on the Spa Fields,...
View ArticleSlipping over the edge …
In my youth, like an idiot, I would sometimes ski off trail heading towards a seemingly tame gully. There was this time as I descended with too much confidence into a steep funnel that I realised...
View ArticleWho caused the First World War? Which men, not nations, are to blame?
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914 by the Australian historian Christopher Clark is the most thorough, balanced and I therefore believe accurate assessment of what took Europe and the...
View ArticleFurther reading
Courtesy of Christopher Clark’s ‘The Sleepwalkers: how europe went to war in 1914′ I have been prompted to seek out further books – this reading stack thus far amount to six books and half a dozen...
View ArticleHaig was no hero
Fig.1. In Flanders Fields It was fashionable to demonise the British leaders of the First World War in the 1960s and it was Alan Clarke who coined the sentence, ‘Lions lead by Donkeys. The media...
View ArticleSir Douglas Haig by J P Harris (2008)
Created in SimpleMinds. get in touch if you’d like a copy. Download the SimpleMinds App for free. Douglas Haig and the First World War (2008) J P Harriss Nearly 600 pages that follow a chronology that...
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