Last week on Thursday (3 September) Chilton County Councillor Stephen Bowron, arranged for several members of local group, the Coffin Dodgers, to have a guided tour of the Story and the Light in Durham City, writes James Moffatt.
The Coffin Dodgers, being a group of retired gentlemen, hold a charity whisky night every Thursday in the Wheatsheaf public house, Chilton, with all monies raised from donated bottles of whisky going to various local and national charities.
At the Story the guide, Rachel, explained the purpose of the Story which offers a gateway to the history of County Durham and its people. Bringing together a diverse collection of records and objects for the first time, The Story charts thousands of years of everyday life in our county. The visiting group were also given access to the site’s vaults which contain over 15,000 artifacts of our historic county’s regiment, namely the Durham Light Infantry (DLI).
One of the artifacts shown to the group was the actual tracked flight plan of Rudolf Hess (the Deputy Leader of Nazi Germany in WWII) who on 10 May 1941 left Germany to fly to Britain and whose plane was first spotted flying over the country by County Durham’s Madge Sanderson on her first ever shift working for Durham Observer Corps maproom tracking enemy aircraft. Hess would become the last ever prisoner of the Tower of London.
At the Light (which only opened on Saturday 22 August on the site of the former DLI Museum) the guide and antiquities expert, Carolyn, explained the reason for the DLI exhibition at the site, which details the stories of the men and women of the Regiment and which can be traced back to 1758 and the 68th (Durham) Regiment of Foot.
Described as “Ordinary people, an extraordinary Regiment”, exhibitions include the stories of Lieutenant Colonel George Fillingham of the DLI, who was Assistant Commander at Bletchley Park which is famed for the cracking of the German Enigma code and Second Lieutenant Michael Farr (DLI) who built the famous hang glider at Colditz Castle during his time as a prisoner of WWII.
The main exhibit piece being the High Wood Cross which was made by soldiers of the DLI during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and when it was erected at the battlefield, the German soldiers actually ceased fire to allow the memorial to be safely erected. It also marks the most fateful day of our county regiment when on 16 September 1916, 405 DLI men were killed in action. Replica name tags of some of the men killed at High Wood in Northern France surround the cross.
After visiting the DLI permanent exhibition, the Coffin Doodgers then visited the fascinating Victory over the Sun, Encounters with Light art exhibition at the Light, which showcases extraordinary light exhibits by celebrated International artists. Both the Story and the Light are a truly wonderful asset to our county’s history, heritage and culture and well worth a visit. The trip was paid for personally by Cllr Bowron in appreciation of the charity work undertaken by the Coffin Dodgers for the people of Chilton and beyond.
James Moffatt
Ferryhill & Chilton's local community newspaper.
