Tudhoe & Spennymoor Local History Society
Acknowledgements: Thanks to: Bob Abley, John Culine and Keith Jackson.
This history is what I remember and other people's recollections of the Second World War in Tudhoe Colliery. Thanks to all. Harry R. Spence 2013
Starting at the Five Lane Ends there was a machine gun post on the cross roads. Up along the York Hill road was a search light in the quarry fields. The railway tunnel running beneath the Five Lane Ends was blocked off at both ends and at the start of Durham Road there were two air raid shelters. Following the battery down from the Five Lane Ends you came to the houses. At the end of one of the streets was what we called the reading rooms where mostly men went to read the papers and play cards or dominoes.This was turned into an ARP Post. In the next street were the colliery offices which were used as the Home Guard quarters. In the schoolyard, at the end of the village, air raid shelters were built and four other shelters were also built in the pony field. An observation post was built on the pit heap which gave commanding views of the North, North West and North East.
Later in the war houses were built in York Hill to accomodate munitions workers who came from the south to work in the Royal Ordnance factory at Merrington Lane. In the aftermath of Dunkirk schools in the area were closed to accommodate the returning soldiers. A unit was built at Middlestone Moor to train or retrain troops, the buildings after the war, were used to house the Remploy Factory.
I remember when a lone German plane dropped incendiary bombs on Tudhoe setting the Co-operative store on fire. The plane dropped between 1,500 and 2,000 incendiary bombs that night all over Tudhoe, Durham Road and Mount Pleasant. Most were dropped on fields, gardens and waste land. According to local men who were out that night the best way to deal with fire bombs was to cover them with a few shovelfuls of earth to quench the phosphorous. I heard it said that two hams were stolen that night but as time went on it was apparent that more than the hams had gone missing. Other things such as shoes, food and clothing had been stolen. Only one person was taken to court for stealing. If that plane had turned round and dropped high explosive bombs a lot of people would have been killed.
A few nights earlier I was in the open along with a friend Bill Johnstone. We were at a scout meeting at the Settlement in Spennymoor when the sirens went off and we were sent home. On running down Durham Road we were stopped by an ARP warden Mr Marley who was also the kiddie catcher for the school. He told us to go into the air raid shelter at the Five Lane Ends but when we got there it was locked. We set off to run down the battery and heard planes overhead and dived under the bushes. We heard nine or ten bombs being dropped and after the plane passed we ran home.
I remember one night while sleeping at my grandmother's house at 69 Front Street; we lived next door at number 70. I was woken and told to get up as my Uncle Wilf had come home on leave from the RAF. I got up and went across the yard into my house and went to bed. Next morning there was utter confusion, after leaving my grandmother's, my uncle went to bed and just got settled in when the ceiling collapsed on him. It must have been weakened by the Buzz bomb that had fallen on Tudhoe cricket field previously.
One of the greatest times in the summer, which was double summertime when it was daylight up to 10 o'clock at night. We would go onto the pit waste heaps next to the lookout post and see the small black dots of the barrage balloons towards the Tyne. If there was a raid over Sunderland or Newcastle you could see the bursts of Ack Ack gunfire.
Some of the old pit buildings were used to store parts of Mosquito aircraft and the old engine house was used to store farm machinery, tractors, ploughs and harvesters etc.
Other activities we lads were involved in when we were old enough were the local Army Cadet Force based at the Catholic School on Durham Road. We were drilled and marched and taught how to fire a rifle. When we lost interest in that we joined the ATC, the Air Training Corps at Spennymoor. There we learned about aero engines and mechanics. Air crew cadets learned morse code and navigation etc. We went on day outings to aerodromes around the area such a Middleton St George, Croft and Usworth only to get to the NAFFI and the Salvation Army canteen just to buy cigarettes and matches. Happy Days!
On Saturday February 14th 1942, Valentine's Day, a tragic event took place at about 10.30. Two Hawker Hurricane fighter planes collided in mid-air over Spennymoor and crashed at Tudhoe. One crashed behind the houses of the Back Row in Tudhoe Colliery and was burned out. The pilot of this plane had bailed out but was too low for his chute to fully open, he fell a number of yards away from his plane and those of us who were there heard him say the Lord's Prayer then he passed away. Our attention was drawn to the other plane, which we were unaware of, by some boys shouting, waving and pointing. We ran off over the pit heaps avoiding the parts of the heap that were on fire, then we saw the second plane crashed into a hedge. When people got there the pilot was still in the cockpit his straps were undone but alas he was dead.
Later we found out that the aircraft that crashed had come from Usworth 55 Officer Training Unit. The site is now occupied by the Nissan Car factory near Sunderland.
The pilots were Sgt. Pilot John Porter,age 22, son of John and Mary Elizabeth Porter. of Brandon Colliery. and Sgt. Pilot Clifford Scott, age 26, a Canadian from Ontario, married with a young daughter. It's believed they sacrificed their lives by flying the planes away from the houses.
A memorial is located at Tudhoe cemetery.
IN MEMORY OF
SGT. PILOT JOHN PORTER
(ROYAL AIR FORCE VOLUNTEER RESERVE)
AND SGT. PILOT CLIFFORD JAMES SCOTT
(ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE)
WHO TRAGICALLY LOST THEIR LIVES
ON 14th FEBRUARY 1942
WHILST EACH FLEW A HURRICANE
FIGHTER PLANE OVER TUDHOE CEMETERY.
On Christmas Eve December 24th 1944 out over the Humber Estuary Heinkel III bombers with V1 pilotless bombs on board were flying towards the coast. A few miles out they released the bombs which it was later said were aimed at Manchester. Of the forty bombs launched only thirty one reached land some fell short in the estuary. Two went astray one dropped at Woodford Northamptonshire the other one came north and west up to Tudhoe Colliery near Spennymoor in County Durham.
It was early in the morning at 6.05am that the villagers of Tudhoe were woken by a loud bang. A flying bomb (buzz bomb) had dropped on the tennis courts on the cricket field. Windows, doors, ceilings, roofs, slates came crashing down, glass flying everywhere. The air raid warning sounded at one minute past six, the bomb landed at five past and the all clear sounded at 6.38am. The damage caused was quite extensive, some 80 buildings were damaged, seventeen badly damaged others suffering only minor damage. Included were two churches, St Charles Catholic Church which was near to the explosion and St. David's Church which was a little further away. It was reported at the time that one man and three women were seriously injured others had minor cuts caused by flying glass and other debris.
A Mr. Clifford Culine, who served in the ARP and the Civil Defence Fire service drove a demolition lorry and with other members of the service went around clearing bomb sites mostly in the Sunderland area. He lived near the isolation hospital which was close to Rock Road cemetery.
The story goes - one night whilst everyone was in bed and hoping that there would be no call out he was rudeley awakened by a knocking on the caravan door. Walter Marley an ARP man asked Cliff if he would report to headquarters as there had been a report that a doodle bug (flying bomb) had dropped at Tudhoe. Cliff duly dressed and went off to report. Unbeknown to the family Cliff's daughter Alice was awake and listening to Cliff and Walter Marley. Cliff's family weren't aware where he had gone and Alice piped up that her Daddy had gone to Tudhoe to catch a bed bug. Another job that Cliff had was to bring a crashed German fighter aircraft from Chester-le-Street to the National School in Spennymoor, better known as 'Dycey's' School after the headmaster Mr Dyson. The plane an ME 109 was on display in the school yard for several weeks.
Keith Jackson of 14 Front Street recalls having been woken by the blast of the bomb and his mother going into his bedroom shouting "We're done we are lost". The windows of their house had been blown out, the doors were hanging off their hinges and the place was covered in soot. Their dog, Prince, was blown across the room and lay stunned against the opposite wall and the Christmas chicken, which was ready to pop in the oven was covered in glass and soot. He also recalls going down the street to the School Row to see if his uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs Taylor were alright. When he arrived at their house he had to knock them up, they had slept through the explosion and knew nothng about the bomb. On going back to his own house, further inspection found a piece of shrapnel embedded into the bedroom wall just above the bedhead. If anyone had been sitting up in bed they would have been killed. A Mr Chismond recalled his front door being blown off, he lived in the end house on what we locals called'Cindy Oven Row'. Jack Snowball of 9 Front Street had windows and doors blown in.
A story from Fred Urwin of Tudhoe Village, who was serving in the Far East at the time, recalls his father telling him about twin brothers, the Robinsons, who having been blown out of their beds by the blast, were standing in their garden playing merry hell about the damage done to the doors and windows. They accosted a local Civil Defence worker, Joe Hodgson, a school teacher who was just coming off duty, complaining bitterly about the damage. Joe who was standing on the road said to them "if you come out here you will see that you have no bloody roof on either".
Bill Fleming's house was badly damaged by the blast from the bomb. At 15 Tudhoe Lane many of the Harrison families' Christmas tree decorations were broken.