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in the South Tyne Valley Notes for the Historically Minded |
The following paragraphs are a brief account of transport development, between 1762 and 2000, in the South Tyne Valley area around Alston, in Cumbria. These historical notes have been compiled and produced for the South Tynedale Railway Preservation Society by Thomas M. Bell.
Introduction
The carriage of the mineral wealth from the mines of the North Pennines was the stimulus for the development of the transport routes of the area. Since Roman times, roads have served Alston Moor, which for over two centuries has been the hub of the road system of the North Pennines.
The railway arrived over 150 years ago, but the line from Haltwhistle never became more than a rural branch, althouh plans were produced which would have made Alston a junction on an important Anglo-Scottish route.
In the year 2000, the roads remain almost unchanged since the 1820s, whereas the railway between Haltwhistle and Alston was closed completely in May 1976. In 1983, a short section of the railway from Alston was re-opened as a narrow gauge tourist line by a volunteer society, and this is now being slowly extended northwards.
Development of the Basic Road System
The Romans first extracted lead and coal from Alston Moor, with the Maiden Way running through the area as part of the Empire’s road system. With the Scottish border only 30 miles to the north, developments of the ore fields of the North Pennines did not occur until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the accession of James the Sixth of Scotland to the throne of England enabled this Monarch to eliminate the troubles which had made the border areas unsafe.
For almost two centuries the Maiden Way, pack horse trails and crude ridge way-type roads were used to carry the lead, and other ores, until major development of the roads through Alston Moor and the Wear Valley was undertaken by Turnpike Trusts.
As early as 1762, a road of sorts, existed through Alston, connecting Penrith and Hexham, but the Trust established in 1778 only improved and turnpiked the section from Summerrods Bar, near Lowgate on the Hexham turnpike, to Alston.
The Lobley Hill Turnpike was the next trust to be established in the North Pennines in 1793, when the road connecting Burtree Ford (Wearhead) with Gateshead and Durham, was improved and made into a turnpike, while the continuation from Burtree Ford, through Nenthead and Alston, to Burnstones and the Maiden Way followed in 1794.
These trusts continued to maintain their respective roads until an Act of 1824 combined all of the routes through Alston into a single Alston Turnpike Trust. The roads authorised by this Act were projected by John Lowden McAdam in 1823 , and were therefore surveyed to have relatively easy gradients, thus allowing horses to pull wagons containing economic loads.
The Alston Turnpike Trust administered one of the largest group of roads in England running from Abbey Bridge in the North Riding of Yorkshire, near Barnard Castle through Alston and Haydon Bridge to Bellingham in Northumberland, from Burtree Ford in County Durham to Brampton in Cumberland, from Penrith in Cumberland to Hexham in Northumberland, with a connection from Fourstones to Hexham and a route by-passing the town of Alston. Some sections were completely new roads, while others were improvements to existing roads.
The completion of the road from Penrith to Hexham allowed a post coach, called The Balloon, to start a service from Penrith to Hexham through Alston Moor on 29th September 1828. While all of the roads which were authorised by the Act were all completed as through routes, several sections remained in their original form, including most of new route to run north from Alston.
Nevertheless, the roads of the Alston and Lobley Hill Turnpike Trusts have become the basis of today’s A and B roads through the North Pennines.
The Arrival of the Railways
Proposals to bring canals to the South Tyne Valley at the end of the eighteenth century came to nothing, but from them developed the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, which in 1838, connected the River Tyne at Gateshead with the Canal Basin in Carlisle. Within seven years surveys were made to bring the iron road to Alston Moor.
The first proposal, made by the Stockton and Darlington group, was for a double track main line starting at Frosterley on the Wear Valley Railway. The Wear Valley Extension Railway was to climb up the Wear Valley, then pass through a tunnel under Killhope before dropping down into the valleys of the Nent and South Tyne to Lambley, where it was to turn west to join the Newcastle and Carlisle main line at Brampton. Although the promoters decided not to proceed due to financial reasons, this proposal stimulated the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway to promote their own branch from Haltwhistle to Nenthead.
The Newcastle Company obtained an Act authorising their branch in 1846, but had second thoughts about the steeply graded section from Alston to Nenthead and obtained another Act in 1849 altering the line at Haltwhistle and abandoning the extension to Nenthead. The branch was completed in sections, being opened throughout for all traffic in November 1852.
The opening of the railway meant the end of the road coach service from Penrith in 1859, when the mail bags started to come by rail. Despite several attempts over the next half century to extend the Alston branch southwards, either by a revival of the line into Weardale, or the even more ambitious Cumberland and Cleveland Junction Railway into Teesdale, Alston remained the terminus of the branch from the north, although lines from the south did reach Middleton-in-Teesdale and Wearhead.
Later Road Developments
The arrival of the railway ended the road improvements for more than a century, although the Alston Turnpike Trust continued, with a somewhat reduced mileage after 1853, until the trusts were disbanded and the roads taken over by local authorities in 1875. Although the long-distance stage-coaches were rapidly replaced by safer, faster and more comfortable trains, horse-drawn wagons continued to serve the communities from the railheads, and horse buses were developed for routes not covered by the railways.
The ready availability of motorised road vehicles after the First World War lead to general upsurge in road transport, both passenger and freight, which received a further stimulus after the Second World War. Alston Moor was no exception, with local buses as well as long distance services to Carlisle, Hexham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Penrith being established in the 1920s.
When road classification was established, the roads of the former Alston Turnpike Trust became the A686 from Haydon Bridge to Penrith, and a series of B roads serving the valleys of the Allen, Tees, Tyne and Wear. Later the road from Burtree Ford to Brampton was altered to become part of the A689 running from Carlisle to Hartlepool.
Late Twentieth Century Developments
When permission was given to close the Haltwhistle to Alston railway, the construction of an all-weather road was part of the agreement, with the main part of this route requiring a new bridge over the South Tyne at Lambley. This was completed, together with the connecting roads in time to allow the train service to be withdrawn in May of 1976 and replaced by a bus service.
The bus service later dwindled to one daily through return journey, with a moderately frequent service from Haltwhistle to Halton Lea Gate, where connection can be made with the recently re-instated service from Carlisle to Alston Moor.
The only other daily service is the original Wright Brothers route from Alston to Hexham and Newcastle upon Tyne, with the Penrith and Keswick section now operating only during the main summer season.
On the other hand, road freight services have gone from strength to strength, with both local and more distant operators regularly traversing the roads over Killhope and Yadmoss to descend Alston’s steep Front Street, before continuing over Hartside to Penrith or down the valley to Brampton.
Even the railway has not completely disappeared from Alston, for although the South Tynedale Railway Preservation Society failed to preserve the original standard gauge branch, it has succeeded in re-opening the southern part of the line as a narrow gauge tourist railway, using British diesel and Continental steam industrial locomotives to haul custom-built coaches.
With the Pennine Way running through the region and Alston Moor on the C2C (west coast to east coast) cycle route, all forms of transport remain alive and well in the North Pennines.
For more information about the South Tynedale Railway, please contact:-
THE SOUTH TYNEDALE RAILWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY,
Registered Office Address:-
The Railway Station, Alston, Cumbria, CA9 3JB.
Telephone 01434 381696.
Talking timetable - Telephone 01434 382828.
Registered Charity No. 514939.
Limited by Guarantee: Company Registration No. 1850832 (England).
E-mail enquiries - please click on links below:
South Tynedale Railway information - Send e-mail to South Tynedale Railway
STRPS membership information only - Send e-mail to Kathy Aveyard
Tynedalesman information only - Send e-mail to Tynedalesman compilers
This page was last updated on 3rd January 2006.
© South Tynedale Railway Preservation Society 2007.