Saxon Settlers Aycliffe (originally ‘Acley’) probably take its name from two Saxon words: ‘Ac’, meaning oak, and ‘ley’, meaning ‘a clearing’. Saxon Middridge seems to have been sited near the Aycliffe golf course, on the ‘middle ridge’ between School Aycliffe and Eldon. Both villages seem to have been on the main road north in those days, and Aycliffe became quite important. Church synods were held there in AD 782 and AD 789, and Saxon remains can still be seen in Aycliffe Village church.
Planned Prisons Saxon Aycliffe disappeared suddenly in 1069, when the Norman invaders destroyed the region. Most of the inhabitants were killed, or died of starvation and disease. The survivors were herded into prison camps. Aycliffe and Middridge were re-sited and rebuilt as bleak rows of huts around a village green. Their inhabitants became ‘serfs’; they were owned by the Bishop of Durham, and were made to work for him in the great Open Fields surrounding each village.
Insurrections and Industry Through the centuries, the ‘serfs’ gained their freedom. They became independent-minded and quarrelsome; 28 of the inhabitants of Aycliffe and Middridge joined the 1569 rebellion, and 5 of them were executed for their part in it. During the seventeenth century, when the Open Fields in Middridge were divided up into separate farms, the process involved considerable ill-will and litigation! The new farmers built their own farmhouses – for instance Greenfield, Horndale and Williamfield – though the land was never very good farmland.
Then, in 1821, George Stephenson was asked to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and the Industrial Age came to south-west Durham – including a coal mine in Middridge and a railway line at Simpasture (it is possible to walk along the course of the Simpasture railway).
The Beveridge Way The Industrial Revolution brought its problems. The pit villages of County Durham were often just rows of slums. When the mines closed down, problems of unemployment were added to the problems of poor housing.
During the Second World War, however, the government established an Ordnance Factory near Aycliffe Village, and after the war this became the basis of an industrial estate. On the poor farmland to the north, a ‘new town’ (of about 10,000 inhabitants) was planned, where the workforce could live. Building began on 28 June 1948. The County Council wanted people to move into ‘Newton Aycliffe’ from the old ‘Category D’ (scheduled to die) pit villages.
The first chairman of the ‘Aycliffe Development Corporation’ was Lord Beveridge. Beveridge chose Newton Aycliffe as the place to realise his vision of a ‘Welfare State’, where poverty, unemployment and squalor would be no more. He even came to live in one of the houses – though he did not find ‘life among the people’ quite as easy as he had expected. The ‘Master Plan’ for the new town envisaged a class-less society, where managers and men would live side-by-side in high-quality council houses. These were the days of the fearsome Miss Hamilton, who interviewed prospective tenants, and visited them to make sure they were keeping their council houses tidy!
Over the years, Newton Aycliffe has grown. Although much of Beveridge’s vision has been lost, the township has conquered its ‘new town blues’, and its people have established a vibrant, happy community.
John D. Clare
NEWTON AYCLIFFE STORY
The Beginning After the Second World War, the North East presented the incoming Labour government with great problems. Coal, steel and shipbuilding were in decline, yet demobbed soldiers needed jobs. Meanwhile, standards of housing in the old pit villages were deplorable. The Beveridge Report of 1942 had pledged to destroy Poverty, Homelessness, Unemployment, Ignorance and Disease – and the new government was expected to create a ‘Welfare’ state, which would care for its citizens from the cradle to the grave.
During the war, an Ordnance Factory had been set up to the west of Aycliffe Village, and it was decided to turn it into an industrial estate. Sixty firms set up there, and by August 1946 they employed some 6,000 workers. One of the original firms was Banda – which all old teachers and office workers will remember. In July 1948, Bakelite’s new factory opened. In those days, plastic was a new invention, and dangerous to make (in 1955, an explosion at the factory injured 8 men). Nevertheless, in 1948, Bakelite’s managing director, WN Davis, declared the factory to be ‘the most modern in the world’, and prophesied that Aycliffe would become ‘a star in the North of England’.
• The workers and their families needed somewhere to live, and Aycliffe was proposed as the possible location for a ‘new town’.
• The R.O.F. employed mainly women (the ‘Aycliffe Angels’). Group 3, who filled the shells, were nicknamed ‘the canaries’ because the chemicals turned their skin yellow.
• R.W. Toothill’s Furniture. The R.O.F. site was not really suitable for ordinary industry, but it was close to the old A1 (now the A167) and its buildings could be cheaply let.
• The first batch of houses – 40 aluminium prefabs at Clarence Green and Travellers Green – was announced in July 1948. The occupants became so fond of them that, when they were scheduled for demolition in 1964, they forced the Aycliffe Development Corporation (ADC) to rebuild them instead, and the houses are still there today.
Beveridge’s Vision There was considerable debate about what the new town should be called. ADC proposed the name ‘Newton Aycliffe’, although one councillor suggested that this, as it comprised two words, would confuse the Post Office. Others campaigned for ‘Yackley’, ‘Newcliffe’ and ‘Great Aycliffe’. The people of Aycliffe Village referred to Newtonians – disparagingly – as ‘them up the road’. Lord Beveridge adopted the new town as the flagship of his new welfare state. He envisaged a ‘classless’ town, where manager and mechanic would live next door to each other in council houses. Newton Aycliffe was to be ‘a paradise for housewives’ with houses grouped around greens, so children could play safely away from the roads. There would be nurseries (to look after children while their mothers went shopping), a sports stadium, a park, and a ‘district heating system’ so dirty coal fires would not be necessary. The pubs were going to be state-run, and would sell nationalised beer! The town centre was to include a luxury hotel, a college and community centre, a people’s theatre, a dance hall and a cinema. There were even plans to use the Port Clarence railway to give townspeople a link to the seaside. The estimated cost of the town was £10 million; a local politician, Colonel Vickery, called it ‘a scandalous and unnecessary waste of public money’.
Lord Beveridge opened the first house on Tuesday, 9th November 1948. Its tenant was D.G. Perry, an ex-army captain.
While the newspapers hailed ‘a dream town’ and ‘a bold experiment’, Beveridge warned the first occupants that he could only offer them a life with ‘no gardens, few roads, no shops and surrounded by a sea of mud’.
• The silver spade that cut the first sod, signed by the guest dignitaries. The spade was stolen in 1995, but recovered by police in 2009.
Pioneering Spirits: the ‘Fifties Life was hard for Newtonians in the early days. ‘You have got to have the pioneering spirit’, Beveridge told the people, ‘until you see the town of your hopes and dreams materialise’. And that was just what the early ‘pioneers’ did. In February 1950 the Rev. Tom Drewette – known affectionately as ‘the man in black’ – arrived, and edited a local news-sheet, The Newtonian. His parishioners worshipped in a deserted farmhouse, without electricity or water, using a glass fruit bowl as a font; later when St Clare’s Church was built, it was designed to look like a barn, in memory of those early, pioneering days.
In November 1950 the cow byre at Clarence Farm was adapted into a community centre. The first primary school was held in a block of flats – until 1953, when Sugar Hill Primary School opened. A library was set up in one of the prefabs.
Newton Aycliffe’s gardeners planted crocuses and daffodils (they held the first garden show in September 1951) and Lord Beveridge, who had come to live in the town, organised weekly tree-planting sessions. By June 1953 – when Beveridge opened the 1000th house (houses were being painted pink and yellow, to prevent the ‘new town blues’) – the Auckland Chronicle was publishing a regular ‘Newton Aycliffe News’ section, reporting the activities of the community association (which met in the granary at Clarence Farm), the cricket, football and tennis clubs, the scouts, cubs and girl guides, a weekly cinema show, a greyhound stadium, a Drama Group, a Catholic Women’s Guild, a Mothers’ Union et al.. There was even a Youth Club, though it didn’t have many members, for Newton Aycliffe in those early days was ‘a town of toddlers’.
• The first shops. Mrs Stevens ran a Post Office from the outbuildings of Clarence farm, next door to Duncan’s grocers.
By 1955, the town comprised a triangle of housing, bounded by the Clarence Railway to the south, Shafto Way to the east, and Central Avenue and Pease Way to the north. The population stood at 6,600. In those early days, every new tenant was vetted by Miss Hamilton (who was quite prepared to tell them to tidy their garden), and personally welcomed to the town by a member of the Community Association; even after 1953, as numbers grew, the Community Association held ‘welcoming parties’ for newcomers.
• The shopping centre at Neville Parade, opened in 1952.
• In 1967, Marlowe Hall Secondary Modern School united with nearby Milton Hall to become The Avenue Comprehensive. It was closed in 1992 and demolished.
New Town Blues: into the ‘Sixties The ‘pioneer’ days lasted into the late ‘fifties. Development continued – St Clare’s Church and Neville Parade Methodist church were opened in 1955. The ‘Blue Bridge’ was built – so vital a road link that it is represented by the chevron on the town’s coat of arms. The Working Men’s Club was opened in 1956, and Vane Road School in 1959 (when it was described as ‘imposing, bright and spacious’). St Mary’s Church was consecrated in 1961, and the Mormon Church – built with the help of visiting American missionaries – was finished a year later.
Behind the scenes, however, problems were arising. A new town needs lots of ‘patient money’ and, by 1957, the government was regretting its involvement. A 1963 White Paper promised ‘to promote . . . economic activity’ in the region, and an Amendment Order was made by Parliament in 1966, extending the area of the town and setting a new ‘target population’ of 45,000. But successive governments failed to deliver their promises. Instead, in March 1957, The Daily Express delivered a bombshell. Merrick Winn, in an article entitled ‘The Town That Has No Heart’, lambasted Newton Aycliffe as ‘perfect planning and perfect monotony . . . nothing to do and nowhere to go.’ Most of all, he criticised the town centre: ‘twelve small shops, a few more half-built, and a keen, cold wind’ (few shopkeepers were prepared to set up in an empty town and wait for customers to move in).
• In 1960, the Queen visited the town; a big TV was set up in the hayloft at the Community Centre so that people could watch (in those days, not every house had a TV).
• By the end of the ‘sixties, housing had been added in the Vane Road, Washington Crescent, Westmorland Way, Elmfield, Williamfield and Redhouse areas. The population of the town had risen to 21,609.
This was the start of decades of criticism in the newspapers of the town’s shops, roads, vandalism and facilities. Articles attacked especially the lack of activities for young people – one youth, reported in 1964, summed up the general tone: ‘It’s a dump, really. There is nothing to do.’
On the other hand, the newspapers (particularly the Northern Despatch, in a column called ‘Newton Aycliffe View’, by Marjorie Spark) reported an endless stream of clubs, trips and shows organised by the people of Newton Aycliffe. Remembrance Sunday and the Good Friday procession to ‘the green hill’ became annual community events. A festival was held for a fortnight every summer, with a different event each day; later this became the annual Carnival, which survived until 1991. Rapid Growth: the ‘Seventies The ‘seventies began badly, when T. Dan Smith (the Chairman of ADC) was charged with (and eventually found guilty of) conspiracy and corruption. His successor Dennis Stevenson, however, was young (26), energetic and imaginative, and the 1970s were a time of rapid development for the town.
In 1974, the Parish Council was re-designated ‘Great Aycliffe Town Council’. The first mayor was local Labour politician Win Dormer. The Council began the annual Bonfire Night fireworks, and an annual civic ball. New toilets were opened in the town centre. In 1974 the Recreation Centre opened – as well as a sports hall and swimming pool, it offered a cinema service, hiring in a programme of films until lack of public interest forced it to stop in 1977. The Burnhill Way Boys’ Club opened in 1976, the same year that the Rotary Club was formed. The next year, a Municipal Golf Course was opened – and at the same time an Angling Pond was constructed. There were even improvements to the town centre. Boots’ opened a large store in 1978, followed by the Fine Fare supermarket in 1979. In 1979, also, a weekly open-air market was started on a pedestrianised Beveridge Way.
ADC also improved its housing stock. After 1976, OAPs were given free insulation and a £300,000 project was announced to convert houses with flat roofs (and put an end to Aycliffe’s ‘matchbox city’ reputation). By this time, the myth of a ‘classless town’ was considered out-of-date. Private contractors were allowed to build new housing estates – for instance Byerley Park, the Chase and Woodham Village (after 1981). In September 1979 ADC began selling its council houses. By the end of the ‘seventies, new housing had been added in the Horndale, Byerley Park, Chase, Burnhill and Agnew areas. The population neared 28,000.
In 1978, Prince Charles came to the town. He opened the Oak Leaf Complex and visited the new Aycliffe Radio.
In 1978, MP Derek Foster called Newton Aycliffe ‘the jewel in the constituency’s crown’ (Aycliffe was in Bishop Auckland constituency) and ADC seemed to be succeeding in its stated aim, to create ‘a self-contained, close-knit community, enjoying good housing and ample amenities.’ In 1973, ADC was given control of the Industrial estate. It conducted a vigorous – if slightly risqué – campaign to attract industry!
During 1973–78, factory space increased 50%, the number of companies on the trading estate rose from 72 to 96, and the numbers employed grew from 8,800 to 10,000 in companies such as Eaton, Schott Glass, Norsk Hydro and Flymo. Aycliffe Industrial Estate is home to firms of international stature.
The Troubled ‘Eighties
January 1980, however, opened with news of job losses at Eaton. The news set the tone for the decade. The region lost ‘Development Area’ status, and there was a steady succession of redundancies. The Newtonian called it: ‘death by a thousand cuts’. By 1986, the number employed on the Industrial Estate had fallen to less than 8,000.
There was trouble in the town centre, too. The Thames Centre, completed in 1984, was disappointing. A steady stream of shops closed down. Most blamed high rents; many were family firms that had been there since the early days of the town – Hackett and Baines, Wentons, the Wool Shop.
The newspapers of the eighties give the impression that almost everything was going wrong. In 1982, and again in 1986, there were acrimonious campaigns to close down Greenfield School.
The Equestrian Centre held its first event in 1984, and began its long dispute to secure access to the A167 (the failure of which eventually ruined it).
Even the character of the townspeople came under attack. When Burt’s Carpets closed down, the manager claimed that most of his business was DHSS cheques, and labelled Newton Aycliffe ‘Giro city’. A Health Authority survey found that Newton Aycliffe had the highest incidences in the District of solvent and alcohol abuse and marital breakdown.
• St Clare’s Church in the early 1980s, showing the large roundabout which the Thames Centre replaced.
• Aycliffe stopped growing; the population fell, to about 25,000.
• ADC had handed over its housing assets to Sedgefield District (now Borough) Council in 1978. It sold the Industrial Estate (to Helical Bar) in 1987, and was dissolved in 1988.
• In January 1986, the Recreation Centre burned down, and did not re-open until May 1988. The town centre in the early 1980s. In 1984, despite a howl of protest, ADC sold the town centre to a private owner. The ‘Nineties After eight years of doom and gloom, things began to change for the better. In August 1988, both Flymo and Tallent announced that they were expanding. Hydro Polymers announced a £50 million extension in 1989, and 3M invested nearly £10 million in its factory. One firm even started drilling for oil! Meanwhile, Sanyo and Fujitsu represented a massive Japanese ‘inward investment’ in the town (by the end of 1994, Fujitsu had invested £300 million in its Aycliffe plant). In 1997, Newton Aycliffe’s MP became Prime Minister.
Perhaps because the economic climate has been generally more positive, the ‘nineties saw a change in the nature of the issues which concerned Aycliffe people. There were still complaints about lack of facilities – but residents seemed to have accepted that the old ADC vision of ‘a self-contained community’ was impossible. Many people were happy to treat Newton Aycliffe as their home, and the town centre as a convenience, but to look outside the town for leisure and for ‘comparison goods’.
The controversial press issues of the ‘nineties were ‘wheely’ bins, bad neighbours, dog fouling, the state of the Avenue site and traffic-calming schemes. The District Council introduced a £1 million ‘Carelink’ scheme, the ‘Community Force’, and, in 1998, a Carer’s Centre. The Town Council set up Early Learning Centres and appointed an Environmental Ranger.
In 1998, the town which was Beveridge’s ‘bold experiment’ celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The anniversary engendered a genuine sense of civic pride. The Town Council made the creation of a circular walk – the Great Aycliffe Way – the central focus of its celebrations. Newton Aycliffe was not and perhaps never could be the ‘dream town’ the early pioneers envisaged, but it had come through the period of its ‘new town blues’.
• Councillor Angela Fleming (Mayor) and her husband, Councillor Bob Fleming (Leader of the Council), cut the cake as part of the Fiftieth Anniversary celebrations.
The New Millennium For a decade, Aycliffe’s MP was PM, and the town became accustomed to being a focus of world attention. In 2000 French President Jacques Chirac dined at the County Hotel in Aycliffe Village, and in 2003 US President George Bush visited Sedgefield Constituency.
Funding poured into local industry, community ventures such as Greenfield Community Arts Centre (2000) and initiatives such as the Aycliffe Church Heritage Centre (2001) and SureStart (2005). In 2008 Newton Aycliffe got a wonderful war memorial, and in November 2009, the Aycliffe Head was lowered into place at the southern entrance to the town; one local wit campaigned for a similar structure to the north, on the grounds that ‘two heads are better than one’.
Despite setbacks, the Industrial Park held its own economically, based on firms such as Filtronic, Tallent, Electrolux and Norsk Hydro. In 2005, the estate was workplace for a workforce of 9000, and in 2006 – as a marker for the future – there was a £1.5million improvement of the Park’s main entrance (although its big balls attracted some derision).
There was ecological progress, too. The Borough Council began recycling and garden waste schemes in 2003. Aycliffe Village won Northumbria in Bloom in three successive years, 2000-2002.
There was even progress on the town centre. Work on the First Phase culminated in 2003 with the building on the former Avenue site of not only a huge Tesco supermarket, but of a new Youth Centre, an award-winning Town Centre Park, and the first quarter of an impressive central concourse which was to link the new development to the old town centre. In 2006, Tesco conducted a major extension and became a Tesco Extra, revolutionising shopping in the town.
In 2005, the Aycliffe Angels were honoured to celebrate their founding contribution to the town and their service to the country during the Second World War.
But the good times were tailing off. After the collapse of Northern Rock in 2007 and the world financial crisis which followed, the Industrial Park shared in the general economic recession, with job losses and the closure of Schott Glass.
In 2007, also, Tony Blair retired as Prime Minister.
Anger grew as progress ground to a halt on a half-finished town centre marred by an abandoned and rotting Health Centre. There were successive campaigns about the lack of toilets in the town centre. In the 2007 elections, the townspeople vented their exasperation on the local Labour politicians, many of whom lost their seats; for a while, the Town Council was ‘hung’ with 15 opposition councillors and 15 Labour.
These were the years of fears and frustration about terrorism, the Iraq War, global warming, swine flu etc., and the mood of the town dipped with the mood of the nation. There was a sense of disillusionment and fractiousness. In 2004, a campaign group in Aycliffe Village tried (though unsuccessfully) to break free from Great Aycliffe and set up their own Parish Council.
In 2008 Woodham Technology College Sixth Form was closed – a major blow to the status of the town. In 2009 Sedgefield Borough Council was abolished and the town was absorbed into the Durham County Council unitary authority. Soon after, in an acrimonious campaign, the town’s social housing (and a lot of its publicly-owned land) was handed over to a social landlord, Sedgefield Borough Homes. It seemed as though everything was turning sour.
Into the future . . . Against the trend, the 2010s started well for Aycliffe. Phil Wilson, who had succeeded to Tony Blair’s seat in 2007, proved himself an energetic and successful MP. In 2008 he had raised the issue of Aycliffe’s town centre in the House of Commons, and eventually work restarted on the Second Phase in 2011.
In the same year, news came through that he had persuaded the government to agree to the development – by the Japanese firm Hitachi – of a new railway factory, a decision which would hopefully secure the town’s economy.
At the start of the second decade of the 21st century – with the 1940s world of the ‘pioneers’ transformed into the high-tech, private enterprise, e-network world of today – our town stares with some trepidation into an uncertain future, amidst national news of economic and environmental crises, government cutbacks and social tensions.
But Aycliffe’s treasures are not, and never have been, in its state-provided facilities; they lie in the character and efforts of its citizens. And we remain committed to the original vision: to create ‘a town where everyone will want to live’.
Note: There is no adequate history of Newton Aycliffe. Relevant sources include Vera Chapman, Around Newton Aycliffe (a book of photographs); John Wearmouth, This from That (a short history of the Methodist Church) and Stella Aberdeen, Newton Aycliffe 1948–68 (a personal account in the town library). Garry Philipson, Aycliffe and Peterlee New Towns 1946–88, by a former Development Corporation Managing Director, is disappointing. The new town records are ‘official secrets’ and cannot be accessed for 50 years! The County Record Office, County Hall, Durham, however, has five scrapbooks of press cuttings covering the period 1948–1974 (ref. NT/AY2/1–5); and the town library has copies of the Newtonian / Newton News for the period 1974–present.
In July 2009 Aycliffe Local History Society produced an excellent 90-minute video history of the village, backed up with extensive support materials; they have also held an exhibition celebrating the history of the village. There continues a desperate need for somebody to organise an oral history project about the town.
