The new Bilton Banks book is out. Mine just arrived today from Amazon. Looks good.

Bilton Banks The Pit and Its People. [Barry Stewart]


http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...its_people.jpg

Mrs Shirley Frost, Phillips, Mothers name May Baxter
 

Please can you contact me via my friend, Pam Bardoe at pambardoe@hotmail.com so that I may ask you a few questions.
Shirley

I am May Baxters daughter, Shirley, if you get this message can you reply to my friend who does the computer work for me, her name is Pam and it is pambardoe@hotmail.com, please make sure you put Baxter in the subject so she knows it is not a span email.
Regards Shirley

Hi Shirley, I did email the above address but never received a response. Regarding the Baxters I don't really have anything more that what is on the website unfortunately, but there is this in the Morpeth Herald, 23rd April 1915, which adds more to the story of John, (still in India in the report above, but anxious to get to the front):

Mr and Mrs Robert Baxter of Shilbottle, Northumberland have five sons serving with the colours. One of them Private J.D. Baxter, is at present lying in York County Hospital, wounded, having been shot in the left lung. Private J.D. Baxter returned from India with the 2nd Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers at Christmas, and was drafted to the Front. On February 17 he was wounded with shrapnel and removed to Rouen Hospital. On Leaving the hospital he returned to the firing line on March 15, and on March 20th he was again wounded severely. When his parents saw him in York Hospital he was much better than they expected. He told them about 3 o'clock on March 20th he was struck with a bullet or segment from a shrapnel shell, and for 12 hours afterwards he lay amongst barbed wire before being found by the Red Cross ambulance detachment.

The Absent voters list for Bilton Banks is in the Lesbury parish list, and includes a few Baxters. John is now with the Army Service Corps in Italy. Probably medically downgraded. I doubt a bullet in the lung did you much good.

Here's his medal index card. He arrived in theatre "1" (France and Flanders) 16th January 1915. Also served with the York and Lancaster Regiment as some point, then the Army Service Corps.

He is on the "SWB List" (Silver War Badge) for men discharged due to wounds or sickness (in his case wounds) and his discharge date was 2nd February 1919. (The SWB Roll also gives his enlistment date, 29th December 1908)

Shilbottle/Longdyke Dene
 

Hi, this is my first post and I thought this would probably be the best thread to ask this in rather than making a new topic. Please feel free to move it if not.

I would like to ask if anyone has any information about 'The Dene' near Longdyke.

We used to play there as kids, like many from Shilbottle I guess, but it never occurred to us at the time what formed it.

I've seen one map refer to the northern end of it (just south of the old Bilton Banks pits and Longdyke road) as "quarry", but it never struck me as even remotely quarry-like as I can recall little in the way of stone or rock or anything that I would associate with a quarry.

I was thinking perhaps it was an old river bed given the boggy nature of the bottom (though that could just be water draining down the steep sides) or even partly man-made to connect the Shilbottle Grange pit to the Longdyke/Bilton Banks pits (a tramway to cart coal to Alnwick perhaps?). Could it be as simple as glacial flow following the ice age?

I've really enjoyed reading about the history of Shilbottle and its stories on the forums so far, so I thought someone might know.

Is that the area with the rifle range in it on this 1899 map? the 'long dyke' itself? the Shilbottle township and parish boundary pass through there as well.

More that one type of 'dyke'
 

The geology map, just to confuse things, shows a basalt dyke orientated east west right across the colliery site. the townhead coal seam is outcropping in the long dyke 'valley'; as is the associated limestone that is quarried elsewhere. There's a line of three boreholes put down along the east side of the depression as well for some reason. The yellow on the map is a drift deposit, alluvium, associated with stream and river channels.
On the other map there are a number of wells and springs in the area too, one of those strata beds must be an aquifer. I think the whole thing is natural, although there does not look to be enough catchment elevation to produce much of a stream, I would guess groundwater is breaking the surface nearby and flowing into there. I know by the time you reach the colliery site there is a bit of a stream, and the colliery pumped into it back in the day, polluting the Aln in consequence.

Hi Coquet, sorry for the late reply.

Yes, that's it, the long dyke itself - I assume where the farm and now cottages got their name. I had no idea about the rifle range though!

On that second image you can see why I thought there might have been a connection between the Bilton Banks and Shilbottle pits, but as you say it suggests it is just a natural feature.

I can't say what it's like now, but back when we were kids (25-30 years back) it was very boggy, bracken all up the sides (with less bracken and more trees on the eastern side, where those 3 bore holes were) and I distinctly remember it had a little wooden bridge (barely more than a fixed raft) over what must have been a particularly boggy part.

I suppose it could have been a larger stream at some point which together with Tyelaw burn provided water for the Shilbottle sewage works at the east of the village. This goes on to become what we know as the 'stinky burn' (or stinky bourne as my mother calls it), the bit which flows down under the High Buston road and next down to the twisty bit of the Warkworth road 1/4 mile east of the Shilbottle Grange pits. I don't know how long it's been known as the stinky burn and whether it came from being downstream of the sewage works. It has a rusty orange colour to it, but I don't know if that's a byproduct of the treatment.

Thanks for your insight. It certainly offers considerably more information than I'd been able to find!