History of Newton Aycliffe
When the Saxons came into the area around 500AD they cut down the thick forests that covered the area and cut a clearing in the oak wood at Aycliife, which translates to 'oak clearing'. The River Skerne had cut a deep valley out of the soft clay, and what had been a large lake had disappeared to become a wide, flat, boggy area that was to prove uninhabitable. The main road north passed to the east, through Middridge. What is thought to have been the first settlement was built on the moraine where the land was dry, the building of a church made this an important local village.
Aycliffe church became a major ecclesiastical centre, and two major conferences (called 'synods') were held at the church in the 8th century.
In 1069, Saxon Aycliffe came to an abrupt end. The people of Durham rose up in rebellion against William the Conqueror, whom had conquered England in 1066, and William came north to defeat them. The Normans killed many people, and destroyed their food stores, so many more died in the famine that followed.
The few remaining Saxons were herded into labour camps, and forced to work as serfs for the Normans. At Aycliffe, the Normans pulled down the old Saxon village round the church, and made the surviving villagers live in huts built in a square round a parade yard. By this time, the 'lake' had dried out enough for the Normans to build a ' Great North Road ', now the A167, along the villages eastern edge.
For many centuries, Aycliffe remained a poor farming village, separated from nearby Middridge by open moorland. Very little happened until 1825, when George Stephenson built the worlds first railway, The Stockton and Darlington Railway, its route was to pass just to the east of Aycliffe, taking coal from the mines in the west of the county to the coal docks at Stockton. The railway was not to make immediate changes for the town, though it was set to change Aycliffe utterly and forever.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, there was a desperate need to build factories to sustain the war effort. The war meant that there was a need for millions of shells and bullets, the main armament factories in the South were sustaining heavy losses with the Nazi bombing raids, so new places not easily reached by the bombers were sought.
There was a need for a location that was well out of the way and in some ways a secret arms factory, though it also had to be near a railway line, so that workers could go there to work every day, and so that the government could transport the shells and bullets to be distributed to the troops and ships. A number of sites were chosen throughout the North, though one was to be Aycliffe and the transformation of the piece of bleak moor land was to become part of the network of Royal Ordnance Factories. The nature of the production work meant that there were hundreds of production buildings separated by blast walls and even part of it built underground along with a rail network linking the factories.
There was a need for a location that was well out of the way and in some ways a secret arms factory, though it also had to be near a railway line, so that workers could go there to work every day, and so that the government could transport the shells and bullets to be distributed to the troops and ships. A number of sites were chosen throughout the North, though one was to be Aycliffe and the transformation of the piece of bleak moor land was to become part of the network of Royal Ordnance Factories. The nature of the production work meant that there were hundreds of production buildings separated by blast walls and even part of it built underground along with a rail network linking the factories.
Work in the factories was dangerous and unpleasant, there were a number of explosions with loss of lives, and the concoction of ingredients have been linked to being responsible for giving some of the workers cancer. As with most professions during the war most of the people who worked in the factory were women, and the Aycliffe Angels, as they came to be called, were among the silent heroes of the Second World War.
Today the site is Aycliffe Industrial Estate and is home to many hundreds of businesses, though a small number of the war time buildings still survive and are in use. A memorial to the Aycliffe Angels has recently been erected by a grateful nation.
Aycliffe's true transformation was to begin in 1948 when the new town of Newton Aycliffe was born.
The 1930s had been a time of terrible economic depression throughout County Durham, with many closed many of the pit villages became derelict and the people in poverty. In most pit villages the houses lacked even basic facilities such as running water and an inside toilet. The outbreak of the war saw many of the men from these villages go off to war and the toll on the country was to show that changes were drastically needed.
The government asked a man called William Beveridge to produce a report on what he wanted Britain to be like after the war. In 1942 Beveridge produced his report. Five giants, he said, oppressed mankind, Poverty, Disease, Homelessness, Ignorance and Unemployment.
Beveridge proposed a state system of Social Security benefits, a National Health Service, Council housing, free education and full employment. He called it the Welfare State and it changed Britain completely and forever. The foundation of modern Britain was set out and is still in place today due to this one man.
The Welfare State was brought in all over Britain in 1948, though Beveridge was to choose one place to provide a bench mark and example of how his Welfare State would work. He needed a place with a lot of factory space for people to work, and a lot of open land to build houses. The moors between Aycliffe and Middridge were perfect, there was a huge ordnance factory that was no longer needed, and there was plenty of poor farmland to build on.
Beveridge chose as his flagship new town, Newton Aycliffe. This man, the shaper of modern Britain, even came to live in the town, and had a house at the top of Pease Way.
