Tynedale

Reports of meetings

October 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 09 October 2025

Attended by : 6 Members + 2 guests

Eddie Graham – Finding My Father

Eddie gave us a fascinating and very moving account of his 30-year quest to locate the final resting place of his father, who has been killed in action in August 1943 while taking part in the liberation of Sicily – when Eddie (and his twin brother Sydney) were just 22 days old.

Eddie’s quest to track down his father began after his mother’s death in 1982. The Army Records Office provided limited information, and it was not until 2009 that a visit to the Royal Irish Fusiliers’ regimental museum in Armagh enabled him to establish the exact date, time and circumstances of the action in which Eddie’s father had been killed.

Subsequently, in 2015, the Ministry of Defence released detailed new information about the burials of casualties. This suggested that Eddie’s father had been buried as an “unknown soldier” in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Catania, Sicily. Eddie put together a dossier of information which convinced CWGC to agree that this unknown soldier was indeed Fusilier E Graham.

Following on from this, new gravestone was erected and in October 2017 a re-dedication ceremony with full military honours took place in Catania : Eddie and his brother Sydney took a full part in the ceremony. A BBC News camera crew filmed the event and also interviewed the Graham brothers at the place where their father had been killed : a report was broadcast on the BBC TV News that night, and Eddie was interviewed on BBC Breakfast the following day. The video recordings of these broadcasts gave an amazing amount of richness to Eddie’s story and had a strong emotional impact.

September 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 10 July 2025

Attended by : 8 Members

Christine Hanley & Glenice Reed – The National Memorial Arboretum (Staffordshire)

The idea of a National Centre for Remembrance had first been proposed by Commander David Childs CBE in 1988 after he had visited Arlington Cemetery and Arboretum in Virginia, USA.

He proposed the concept as a space where everyone can celebrate lives lived and remember lives lost. In 1994, an appeal for funds was launched by the then Prime Minister, John Major. Development of the site, near Tamworth in Staffordshire, began in 1998.

When Christine and Glenice visited the National Memorial Arboretum in 2015, there were about 300 memorials in place : this figure is now (2025) in excess of 400. We were shown a series of photographs showing many of the memorials, which are not to individuals but to groups of people. Various units of the UK Armed Forces are commemorated, but other nationalities are represented (such as the Polish Service Men and Women Memorial and the Colonial Kenya Police Force).

The emergency services are also commemorated, as are less obvious groups such as rail workers (the Railways Memorial is in the form of a steam locomotive) and the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain (complete with a painted horse from a fairground roundabout).

Other, less formalised, groups are represented, too. There are installations in memory of those Shot at Dawn, those represented by the Stillbirth and Neonatal Society and also the Twin Towers

The variety of styles of memorial was really striking. Some of the memorials are in quite conventional stone designs, with metal plaques containing text and insignia. But as well as the locomotive and the fairground horse there were sculptures of a polar bear, a Toc H lamp, Hermes (representing the Royal Corps of Signals) and – in the Naval Services Memorial – an array of large, multi-coloured glass panels.

All the memorials are set in a beautifully landscaped green area of about 150 acres, with water features and more than 25,000 trees. A recent addition to the site has been a 25-acre plot dedicated to NHS workers, other key workers and all those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is called the Tree of Life Glade and features a Speath Alder tree. As well as the living trees, there is a very striking 4-metre bronze sculpture called the Tree of Memories.

June 2025

12 June 2025 : Members’ Forum : Ag Labs to Academics – our families’ occupations
Attended by : 9 Members

The first part of the forum was taken up with a video on YouTube of a Tyne Tees TV documentary from 1986 titled Last Train to Riccarton. This showed 1956 film footage of the final rail service from Hexham up the North Tyne valley to Keilder and on to the Scottish Border, after which the line was closed and dismantled. The included reminiscences from many of those involved, including the father of one of our branch members, who spent his working life on the railways – particularly the North Tyne branch line.

The discussion which followed – perhaps inevitably considering the social history of the North East – centred on mining and heavy engineering. From various members’ contributions, it was possible to see a consistent pattern of people moving from working as agricultural labourers – or in traditional roles such as thatchers, cordwainers, shepherds or sawyers – into the burgeoning mining industry. Although the work was hard, with unpleasant and dangerous working conditions, the pay was better than that to be had in alternative occupations. Even before the demise of the coal industry, some families switched to alternative occupations such as running fish and chip shops, wet fish shops or barber’s shops. One member had researched a family tree for a friend and found many generations of miners in Yorkshire and Durham : however, the daughter of this mining family had gone on to become a university professor in the USA.

One of the group was descended from a John Hedley from Bellingham, who during the 1850s had been the butler at a large house on the outskirts of Hexham. This house was now Hexham Golf Club, the very premises in which the meeting was being held.

There was an interesting collection of photographs and ephemera from the career of the grandfather of one member – a working life in the General Post Office, starting out as a Telegraph Boy.

It was also noted that an individual’s occupation could be a very useful point of reference when researching our family trees. One member had used the occupation of Brass Button Maker to help track the movements of an individual from Birmingham in 1841 to London in 1851 to New York in 1860. Approximate dates of birth and the names of wives and children give some confidence that the person is the same one as the subject being researched, but an unusual occupation gives more certainty to the research

May 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 8th May 2025
Attended by : 8 Members + 1 Guest + Guest Speaker

Eddie Graham – The West Road Cemetery Project (Prudhoe)

Eddie Graham gave us a fascinating talk about the project he had instigated in 2016 to restore the sorely neglected St Mary Magdalene Cemetery in Prudhoe – locally known as West Road Cemetery.

The population of Prudhoe had grown from 210 in the 1820s to over 5,000 by the 1870s, with the opening of nine collieries resulting in a massive influx of people from elsewhere attracted by the work which, although hard, dirty and dangerous, paid better wages than agricultural labour.

The site was originally intended to be the churchyard for a new church and was opened in 1870. However, funds were not available to build the church at that time and by the time work on the new church commenced some ten years later, a new site in the centre of the town had been selected.

The cemetery was fully open from 1870 to 1903, but burials in family graves and pre-purchased plates continued until 1962, The total number of graves is close to 3,000 in an area equivalent to two football pitches. In recent times, the cemetery had fallen into a severe state of decay. It was completely overgrown, self-seeded trees had grown into grave sites, while storm damage and general weathering had occurred.

Eddie had pulled together a team of about 10 local volunteers who were willing to work on the restoration project. Gaining the necessary permissions from the Church of England and from Northumberland County Council and taken more than six months, but then work could commence.

A comprehensive, chronological sequence of photographs showed the progress of the work up to the present day, when the cemetery is a well-tended, pleasant place for remembrance and tranquility.

Most gravestones had fallen over, with some broken and buried. All the kerbstones around the graves have been re-laid, all the memorials have been brought back to the vertical and broken stones have been repaired. The site is now a wildlife haven, with provision for birds, bats, frogs and insects.

Along the way, Eddie and his team have received – richly deserved – community awards. They continue their work by maintaining the site, and offer guided tours to groups. On Wednesday mornings and Friday mornings, the volunteers are on site and are glad to talk to visitors about the project.

April 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 10 April 2025
Attended by : 7 Members + 1 Guest

Members’ Forum – Prizes, Awards and Medals

The most notable awards we heard about were the CBE and the Knighthood awarded to the late husband of one member : he had twice been recognised for services to the nation in his role as a senior civil servant in the Department of Employment. The investitures had taken place at St James’s Palace and had been carried out by the (then) Prince of Wales – now HM King Charles III – who, in the absence of his mother HM the Queen had done the honours. (Pun intended).

Several members had brought war service medals and other items associated with family members. A World War I Service Medal awarded to the cousin of a member’s father who had died young was circulated, along with photographs and documents. One member’s grandmother had provided nursing assistance on the Home Front during World War I as part of the Voluntary Auxiliary Detachment. Another medal was the Good Conduct Medal issued to a member’s Great Great Grandfather after serving in the Royal Artillery from 1847 to 1870.

On the sporting front, another member recalled that the only award she could remember being given to a family member was a Golf competition trophy. Another member had brought along a trophy from 1981 which her father had won as part of a pub Darts Team in a local league.

A member who grandfather had been Head Teacher at Kimblesworth School passed round a perpetual desk calendar and pen holder presented to his grandfather on his retirement in 1951.

Having been unable to find the items she had hoped to bring, another member had her mother’s School Certificate from the 1930’s : her mother had gone on to be a nurse in Hartlepool and there she had met the man who would become her husband, and our member’s father.

All these disparate items had one thing in common – that they brought to life part of the story of our family members. In the context of our meeting, each item sparked a lively, interesting and often wide-ranging conversation.

March 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 13 March 2025
Attended by : 7 Members

David Butler :- Gibside : Grandeur and Magnificence
David Butler is (among other things) a volunteer for the National Trust at the Gibside site, specialising in leading guided historic walks around the estate.

He gave the group a fascinating illustrated talk on the history of the Gibside Estate and the members of the Bowes family who developed what may well have been ordinary agricultural land into the grand park and associated buildings which it became in the eighteenth century.

It is known that the land belonged to the Marley family, and then the Blakiston family, before Elizabeth Blakiston married William Bowes in 1690. Their son George Bowes (1701-1760) was the man who created the landscape of the estate we can see today.

Gibside sits on a coalfield which had previously only been exploited for local, domestic use. Newly developed technologies – Newcomen’s steam engine to pump water from mine shafts and waggonways to enable transport of coal down to the Tyne – enabled George Bowers to make an enormous fortune by exploiting the coal deposits under his land.

Bowes set about creating a home and estate designed to emphasise his wealth and enhance his status. The “grandeur and magnificence” of the completed works was recorded by a visitor. As well as a 3-storey hall, Bowes had a banqueting house, impressive stable buildings and a column topped with a statue of Liberty constructed. These structures are located in such a way that the approaching visitor would pass a series of impressive buildings separated by stretches of woodland so as to maximise their visual impact. George Bowes’ final commission was the chapel, only a year before his death : work was not completed until some 52 years later.

After Bowes’ death, the estate passed to his 11-year-old daughter. This was Mary Eleanor Bowes, an only child who marital choices were fairly disastrous. Her first marriage was unhappy with adultery by both partners, while her second husband tricked her into marriage with an elaborate plot and proceeded to squander his wife’s wealth.

It was only after Mary Eleanor managed to divorce her second husband and regain control of the estate that Gibside could recover. The restoration was largely carried out under John Bowes, 10th Earl of Strathmore, Mary Eleanor’s eldest son from her first marriage.

In the early 19th century the main house was re-modelled, being reduced to 2 storeys with the addition of the crenellations we see today. Subsequent generations of the Strathmores neglected Gibside in favour of their Scottish seat, Glamis Castle. Paintings, furniture and even fireplaces were removed to Glamis. The house was used by the Home Guard during World War 2, then the roof was removed. This led to the complete destruction of the interior, leaving the shell which remains and is now a Grade I Listed Building.

February 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 13 February 2025
Attended by : 9 Members
John Parker :- Using Family History as a work tool

Branch member John Parker gave a talk and slide show based on his experience over the past couple of years doing occasional research work for a friend and former colleague. The scope for doing paid work involving family history research is very limited – it is a narrow, niche field. However, John had been approached to carry out archival and desk-based research by a Heritage Consultant who provides professional planning and conservation advice on major restoration and construction projects.

Using the access to the British Newspaper Archive provided by FindMyPast, it had been possible to unearth stories about the specific buildings under scrutiny and their owners, builders, residents and business occupiers. This information is useful in Heritage Reports as it adds a touch of human interest to what can be a rather dry list of dates and events in the Time Line which forms a minor part of the content, alongside the comprehensive discussion of the historic and architectural features of the building.

On occasion, it has also been worthwhile to use Ancestry to build small family trees in order to put together a picture of the people involved with a particular building. Two such projects related to Benwell Dene House (later the Royal Victoria School for the Blind) and the Stephenson’s Locomotive Works at Forth Street. As well as Ancestry, Wikipedia also proved useful for background information about the people who commissioned these buildings.

Having completed the research work on these two projects, John had a nagging feeling that there might be some connection between the two because the surname “Pease” cropped up in both pieces of research. Curiosity then led him on an (uncommissioned, unpaid) piece of follow-up research using Ancestry and Wikipedia. Starting with Thomas Hodgkin (a banker, historian and philanthropist who gave Hodgkin Park to the Town Council) – for whom Benwell Dene was built – a family tree emerged which included the Pease and Backhouse banking families from Darlington, the Fox shipping family in Cornwall, the Fry chocolate manufacturers from Bristol and the prominent Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse.

As well as giving him an enhanced appreciation of the Built Heritage (particularly in Newcastle), this occasional paid work – enjoyable and interesting in itself – led to John being in the unusual position of being able to find some of the subjects of his family history researches on Wikipedia and also sparked an interest in the history of the Quaker movement in the nineteenth century.

January 2025

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 09 January 2025
Attended by : 9 Members
John Harrison :- DNA Workshop

Branch Member John Harrison distributed a handout which explained, step by step, how to take a list of DNA matches provided by the DNA testing company and analyse the results so as to maximise the value of the information in our family trees – either by validating the results of our researches or by providing new information to research around.

Using his own Ancestry DNA test results and the list of his own DNA matches, John showed how each matching person can be identified as belonging to either the Maternal or the Paternal side of the family tree, and then how each person can be attributed to a particular set of Great Grandparents.

The information resulting from this analysis can then be recorded in a tabular format on a spreadsheet which embodies the principle of the Leeds Method (named after its creator’s surname, rather than the Yorkshire City) for analysing family data.

Once the chart has been filled in – using a manageable number of the DNA matches listed, which tend to run into the thousands – it can be used to further your research. For those matches who have a public family tree available online, this is a matter of looking at their trees to find out how they are related to you. Those without trees can still be resolved by looking at their relationships to other people in the list of matches.

Once you have added new people to your tree, you may feel that is enough. However, you may wish to make contact with them – which is facilitated by Ancestry and other DNA testing sites. John suggests that the best approach is to give the person plenty of information about how you think you are related and to offer to share information with them. This line of approach is more likely to elicit a response than just saying you seem to be related and not offering your new-found distant cousin some kind of benefit in replying.

After the meeting, John emailed a copy of his Leeds Method Chart spreadsheet to all branch members so that those who are interested can follow through the process with their own list of DNA matches. He also expressed a willingness to provide further advice and guidance to any group members who would be welcome to email him with their queries.

Several members expressed an interest in trying out these techniques in order to make more sense of their own DNA test results, so there may well be scope for a follow-up workshop in the future, if John is willing to take that on.

November 2024

Group meeting held at 2.30pm on Thursday 14 November 2024
Attended by : 12 Members

John Heckels :- Chirupula Stevenson : Tyneside’s African Explorer

John Heckels introduced Chirupula Stephenson – born John Edward Stephenson in 1876 – to whom he was connected by the marriage of his aunt to Edward Stephenson. The Stephenson family were ships’ chandlers in North Shields, but at the age of 20, John Edward was a telegraph operator and he headed to Africa.

Having heard from his uncle back in 1972 about this this family member who had “gone native” and to whom many colourful tales were attributed, John Heckels researched John Stephenson over the years.

On arrival in Africa, Stephenson found employment with the British South Africa Company. As he progressed within the company, he was given the responsibility of taking part in, and later leading, expeditions to areas further North in Africa. For about 20 years he was in and around what is now Zambia as a senior figure in the British South Africa Company which was, in effect, the British Empire. But far from being an imperialist despot, it seems that Stephenson was very diplomatic and sympathetic to the local peoples and their traditions and culture. At the same time, he introduced European ways and the Victorian social order : Stephenson is recognised as the founder of the town of Ndola in the Zambian Copper Belt.

After resigning from the BSAC, Stephenson set up as a citrus farmer and remained in Africa until his death in 1957. By that time, his assimilation into local society was so deep that his funeral was attended by hundreds of Africans, as well as dozens of Europeans. Stephenson had managed to retain his standing as a man of substance in European eyes while at the same time being accepted by the African society within which he lived.

As is so often the case, the stories that had been passed down were mostly based on fact, but had been amplified and distorted when re-told. It was certainly true that John Stephenson had acquired names in native languages – “Chirupula” from his time as a Commissioner and Justice of the Peace, and “Luchere” from his initial encounters with one of the indigenous peoples he came across on his travels. It is also true that he had three native African wives, with whom he had a total of nine children : however, it appears that these were genuine partnerships with all the domestic rewards and tribulations which would be associated with conventional marriages back in England.

This was a fascinating story, told in a very entertaining way and backed up with a huge amount of research. There was also an unexpected, unlikely postscript to the tale which made this example of family history research even more rich and enjoyable