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Is your name on the shell?

26/4/2014

In our first article on the Great War, we reproduced the weekly column called Wayside Jottings by Rambler from Saturday 9th May 1914. Rambler continued to write in the Newcastle Journal throughout the War and clearly had an attachment to Heddon on the Wall and other parts of Tynedale. On 1st January 1916, he is in Heddon again, and as usual interested in plants and flowers of his surroundings.

He first describes Heddon Railway Station where the stationmaster had moved his previous summer bedding plants, the ornamental succulent Echeveria, into boxes laid by the window in the protected environment of the waiting room. He records that the room was pleasantly warmed by a central stove and that the stationmaster had been previously awarded a prize by NER, before the war, for the appearance of the Station.

Interior of the General Room at Heddon Railway Station decorated for Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Photo courtesy Newcastle Central Library.

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William Brown of Throckley

5/4/2014

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I first came across William Brown's name last year in my research work for the Puffing Billy Festival .

The very short Wikipedia entry for Throckley tells us:

One of Throckley's more notable residents was William Brown, who was a consulting engineer in the 18th century, and part owner of Throckley Colliery at the time, responsible for the construction of many colliery waggonways throughout the North East of England.

There are a few details published about his work as an colliery engineer but very little appears to have been written about his private life. The year he was born seemed to be unknown and it was not known where he was buried. The commonness of his name doesn't help in this regard.

A History Of Coal Mining In Great Britain By Robert L. Galloway (1882) is available as an eBook on the Durham Mining Museum website. Chapter XI provides the following information:

Prominent among the builders of engines, as well as in promoting other improvements in the mechanical engineering of collieries in the Newcastle-on-Tyne district at this period, was William Brown, an eminent colliery viewer. Brown was brought up at Throckley, a village situated about six miles west of Newcastle, and was of an aspiring mind and endowed with much natural ability. The means of acquiring a knowledge of the various branches of colliery work were few at this time, but by dint of careful observation and making the most of such opportunities as he had, Brown was already possessed of superior attainments at an early period of his life, and subsequently succeeded in raising himself to the first position among the colliery viewers of his day.

At the outset of his career he had the good fortune to be taken by the hand by Mr. Bell, a gentleman living in the neighbourhood, who leased Throckley Colliery, and appointed him manager, with a handsome salary and one-fourth share of the colliery. On obtaining this position, in 1756, Brown immediately proceeded to erect a steam-engine at the colliery; and no sooner had he shown his engine-building capabilities at Throckley, than his services were in great request for the building of engines to drain other collieries in the district, In the two following years he built six more engines at different collieries; and in the short space of ten years after commencing practice he had fitted up no fewer than twenty-one steam-engines, including three at collieries in Scotland. Subsequently he built several others.

When I was trying to put some facts together about William Brown for a followup meeting in Throckley about the Puffing Billy Festival, the penny suddenly clicked; I had seen his gravestone in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church in Heddon. The common name and simple grave-slab, associated with a coat-of-arms, did interest me at the time I photographed the gravestones for this site. It is clearly a memorial for a family of some importance but I knew nothing of the man's reputation at that time.

The family burial place of William Brown ESQ., St Andrew's Churchyard, Heddon on the Wall. Photo A Curtis (2011).

Detail from graveslab of William Brown, St Andrew's Churchyard, Heddon on the Wall. Photo A Curtis (2011).

The memorial is numbered [283] in the transcription of graveyard memorials. It is a very plain slab, flat to the ground surface, situated close to the outside east wall of the south aisle of the church. Apart from the coat of arms, the inscription is simple, with no dates:

The family burial place of William Brown Esq.

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Is your name on the shell?

William Brown of Throckley

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