Issue No. 22: ESCAPE TO THE HILLS




Atop Cleadon Hills

Looking out of my bedroom window, in the distance I could see the water tower we called ‘Cleadon Chimney’ atop Cleadon Hills, towering above the roofs of our housing estate. This was a strange and compelling object to me, and I looked at it first thing every morning and last thing at night. On a clear, cloudless evening, the moonlight shone down upon its tiled roof and red brick walls, bringing the structure into sharper focus and seemingly (and tantalisingly) almost within reach. It also served, to me, as an early warning of sea fog coming inland and, as I watched, the billowing mist would obscure it at the same time as the doleful foghorn from the Souter Point lighthouse sounded on the coast at Whitburn, on the far side of Cleadon Hills.

‘Cleadon Hills’ is a ridge of high ground rising above the coast between Marsden Bay and Whitburn, and standing between Cleadon Park estate, Cleadon Village and the North Sea. Apparently, Cleadon Hills and other hills in the region were once small islands in a tropical lagoon known as the Zechstein Sea. The name suggests that it was named after a rock star but knowledgeable readers will know that this is not the case, not least because this occurred 260 million years ago, which is even older than the cumulative ages of the Rolling Stones. Incidentally, the name ‘Cleadon’ evolved from the original ‘Cliffa-dun’ (or a hill with a cliff) and then progressively became Clevendona, Clyvedon, Clevedon and then, in the 1600s, Cleydon (I knew you would be interested in that!).

I had to wait an eternity (well, six years actually) before Mam’s ban on me going to Cleadon Hills could be set aside. This coincided with me going to the Grammar School and also getting a ‘grown up’ bike. Having the bike meant that I could get to the bottom of Cleadon Hills, beside the waterworks and Cleadon Chimney, but not onto the Hills proper, as they were too steep and rugged. So, on the days I wanted to climb onto the Hills, I had to leave the bike at home and walk there. This meant a long trek up the steep bank of Quarry Lane (where the incontinent Tommy Blower lived – see Issue No. 6) and then through the neatly laid out lawns, flower beds and bowling greens of Cleadon Park, past the playing fields and rocky outcrop of ‘Crow Island’ in ‘The Quarry’ (formerly a quarry, believe it or not), and then out of the park, past the ‘Special School’ (where I once saw Alfie Agnew’s sister staring wildly at me through the wire fence) before following a steep track to Cleadon Chimney, and then (in a moment) clambering up onto the top of the Hills.

However, let me pause (slightly out of breath) at Cleadon Chimney before we resume that scramble to the summit. At one time I had no idea of why it was known as ‘Cleadon Chimney’ when, supposedly, it was a water tower. It didn't look like a chimney. It had a viewing platform near the top and it had a tiled roof. In fact the water tower, part of a pumping station which opened in 1863 (making it younger than the combined ages of The Rolling Stones), is a chimney. It was designed by the Victorian engineer, Thomas Hawksley, to resemble an Italian campanile bell tower. It was placed on the highest point of the site, above the other waterworks buildings, so that it could vent the smoke and steam from the original steam-powered pumps. I never saw that when I was young because the pumps were converted from steam to electricity in 1930. The chimney is 100 feet tall, and the viewing platform I mentioned, reached by a square spiral staircase of 141 steps, is 82 feet above ground level. This pumping station was one of a number in the area constructed to tap the reserves of clean, fresh water trapped in the permeable limestone. Cleadon Chimney also had an unforeseen and unwanted purpose, as it was used as a navigational landmark by the Luftwaffe’s bombers in World War 2. As you will see if you click on this hyperlink,  Wartime bombing in South Shields was devastating, particularly the air raid on 2nd October 1941, when the market place and town centre, which were adjacent to the shipyards, were hit. The market place had an underground shelter but, unfortunately, a bomb careered off the cobbles and crashed through the wooden shelter door, killing many inside.

Irrespective of its original purpose and its past and present usage, Cleadon Chimney is both a local landmark and one which, by its very visible presence, dominated my early life. It drew me away from the houses and streets below up to a different world above. And what a different world! Up on top of Cleadon Hills, at its northernmost edge, you can look down upon the whole town below and far beyond, over the river Tyne and right up the Northumberland coast, to the Cheviot Hills, which mark the border with Scotland. Walk a little way along the ridge of the Hills, past Cleadon Chimney, and you can gaze upon Sunderland and its seaside playgrounds at Seaburn and Roker, and down the Durham coastline towards Hartlepool and the Tees estuary. Face west and you view the hills of Gateshead and beyond, and also the whole conurbation of Tyneside.

Up on the Hills all is quiet. When I was a kid, you could hear the skylarks in summer, rising from the wheat fields of the farm at the top of the Hills. With the magnificent views in every direction, I walked, as a child of 11, along the whole length of the ridge of the Hills, dropping down to the old village of Whitburn on the coast, and then walking, very tired but exhilarated, all the way back again. As a man, married with young children, we made that same happy journey many times.

These latter walks were not even spoilt by my experiences in between times, as Cleadon Hills, or at least part of them, were the chosen venue for my senior school’s cross country championships. These were a wheezing, spluttering, lung-searing, eye-watering, side-stitching, phlegm-spitting, snot-snorting hell. They would have been more so for the smokers, but they had both the gall and the local knowledge to find hiding places lower down the route, where they could have a drag, a gossip and a pee, letting the rest of us slog it up to the summit, before they merrily re-joined the race just after the leading group had passed by, on the way back downhill. Like in so many other school pursuits, I was useless at cross country running. Not only was it pointless but it was painful. The lowest point of the run, for me, was the last lap around the school playing fields where, despite re-entering the school gates knock-kneed and arms flailing, me and another idiot would try to sprint for the honour of finishing third or fourth last, both collapsing into a heap of sweating breathlessness, completely ignored by the straggling remnants of the crowd who had previously cheered those first home (including the smokers) seemingly an hour or so beforehand.