Broomhill Christian Mission
 

In 1891 my great grandfather was a trustee of the hall and was hauled in front of Alnwick magistrates for allowing the hall to be occupied before the sanitary authority had issued a license confirming that the property had a good and wholesome water supply. The authority had refused a certificate on the basis that there was no supply nearby. The ground floor was a dwelling and first floor was the hall, situated at the north end of Togston Terrace. It turned into a bit of a joke because it had no worse access to water than anywhere else in the village. The hall was a methodist establishment and by 1902 there was a church and foundation stones laid for an extension for a hall and class rooms. This seems to be where the Church of Christ is now, built to replace the original when it was destroyed in 1939 when a bomber crashed into it. I don't know whether anyone has more info? Photo below shows the extended church in I think 1908 when the then Prince of Wales visited Northumberland.

The story of the crash which destroyed the church on 21 December 1939 appears in Brian Pears NE War Diary but basically a Hampden bomber was shot down mistakenly by Spitfires as it was making its way to Acklington, short of fuel. I haven't been able to find a newspaper report (yet) but 2 crew members were killed, Sgt SH Potts (Chevington cemetery) and AC1 E Humphrey. It seems that one local was also killed and one injured. There is another thread on Rootsweb which suggests that local men rescued some of the crew and one received the George Medal.

Crash into the Church of Christ.
 

This incident is refered to in J H Hardy's " In this quiet lane". As stated the plane ran out of fuel whilst attempting to land at Acklington and two of the crew were killed. 100 children were having a christmas party in the nearby school and two of the Longstaff brothers, the bus people, were among those who helped to rescue the crew members. Robert Longstaff was awarded MBE for his part in the rescue, live ammunition was exploding during the rescue. It was reported in the Morpeth Herald but there is no mention of spitfires shooting it down. ( Pages 9 and 10 of the book.)

Brave men. I would be heading in the opposite direction.

(MBE) from the London Gazette:

17th May, 1940.
The KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the following Award: —
The Medal of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for Meritorious Service: —
Robert Longstaff, Proprietor of the Togston Garage, North Broomhill.
On December 27th, 1939, a Hampden bomber of the Royal Air Force was returning from an operation over enemy territory. On preparing to land, the aircraft crashed within 500 yards of the boundary of the aerodrome and burst into flames. The pilot of the aircraft was seriously injured and the other two members of the crew were killed.
Mr. Robert and Mr. George Longstaff, who are proprietors of a garage in the vicinity of the aerodrome, heard the noise of the crash and immediately went to the scene with fire extinguishers. On arrival they found the aircraft on fire, but Mr. Robert Longstaff managed to get the pilot clear of the machine by cutting some of the rigging with which he had became entangled. He then, with Mr. George Longstaff, made attempts to rescue the other two airmen who were trapped in the fuselage. They were warned that there might be bombs on the aircraft, but they continued to use their utmost efforts, in spite of the fact that machine-gun ammunition was exploding and the flames increasing in severity. It was only when the heat became altogether too intense that they gave up their efforts to free the airmen.

I've heard the friendly fire story before but don't know what the source of that is. If it was true nothing would be published at the time; it would have to come later from the MoD or Squadron records I think.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Alan, The Quiet Lane should have been my first port of call, sorry John Hardy :o The photograph of the crash site is a useful comparison with my 1908 photo.

As far as the friendly fire issue is concerned, there is a write up on 49 Squadron's Roll of Honour for Sgt Potts, see http://www.49squadron.co.uk/Roll%20o.../Potts_SH.html It is not clear from that whether this particular bomber crashed from lack of fuel or whether it had also been hit by a Spitfire, probably the former.

I mentioned in my first post that my gt grandfather (Thomas Beverley) was one of the original trustees of the Mission. He and his family (but not my grandmother and her sister) emigrated to Australia in May 1913. The family memory is that they went with a significant number of the Mission families to take up a land grant in Western Australia. We certainly have a large group photo taken in the outback. The sons were soon felling timber for the building of the railroad but by 1917 they had moved to NSW (Weston) and back into the pits. My grandmother received a letter in 1944 about the funeral of another sister in Weston: "Lots of the old Broomhill folks were at the funeral....Alexander Sanderson, Will Slater, Jimmie Richardson, Lizzie Charlton, the Forster family (related to Beverleys), Will Beverley, Gil Percy, Mrs Cloud, Mrs Liddle, Mrs George Bell's daughter and others.."
I wonder if anybody has family memories about this group of people?

Fascinating. I wonder if any of the boys joined the AIF during WW1? The Aussie War Memorial have all the service papers online:
http://www.awm.gov.au/

might have some unknown Broomhill Gallipoli vets!

correction: the service papers are here:

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/Searc...sicSearch.aspx

Some interesting stuff in there, found a Thomas Common, born Amble Northumberland, served in a WW1 Australian Tunnelling Company. (survived the war and returned to Australia.)


Also a John Edgar Stewart, born Amble, served in the Vietnam War. (file still closed)

This is the type of MBE issued during the WW2 period. Longstaff's would look just like this but the grey stripe in the centre of the ribbon would be missing (grey stripe = military, no stripe = civil)

I generally have one or two MBEs or OBEs around as it's (medals) supposed to be my day job :o


http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/images/mbe2.jpg

There was a Beverley accidentally killed walking on the rail tracks, I think between Amble and Radcliffe, would he be from the same family?

Yes, Charles Burn Shipley Beverley was the son of my great grandfather's uncle, Wilson Heslop Beverley. Charles' mother, nee Shipley, came from the family of Mormon converts in Radcliffe who went to Utah. Wilson was a strong Methodist, along with most of the Beverleys, so plenty of lively arguments there!

Janwhin, that page you link to explains that other returning aircraft from 44 squadron (on the same mission) actually were shot down, but this occurred at Dunbar. Someone has confused the 49 Squadron aircraft that crashed at Broomhill, out of fuel, with them I think.

I wonder how the plane managed to avoid the houses at the other side of the road if it was coming in from the east?

The Gazette photo used in John Hardy's book shows the houses standing unscathed. Even if he'd come in a bit north of east he would have needed to miss the ones standing to the north as well. It's a miracle really everything was missed, including the school's christmas party.

You've started me off on another line of research now by mentioning Thomas Common and the Australian website:D
My maternal grandmother was a Warkworth Common and I now realise that this Thomas would be her first cousin.
Why did I ever join this forum :eek:

Does Macca670 have a splendid picture of the Church that was hit by the plane in his album?

Macca670 does have a splendid picture of the Church.

There is also a photo of the Amble Carnival Queen on the float. The lady sitting on the right with the flowers looks awfully like Mrs Bowey?

Re. Hampden crash at Broomhill
 

When the aircraft crashed I was still in the womb therefore cannot claim eye witness!!
My Mother did relate to me that the aircraft suffered damage during operations and was running out of fuel. Whether the pilot missed or aborted landing I don.t know but he was trying to "Cut the corner for an attempt at getting to Acklington". His track took him north flying just over the junior school and Broughs' store. That store is only some 5 hundred yards from the crash site. Had he got a little more height he may have cleared Togston Crescent and may have been able to belly-flop into the fields behind. Sadly that wasn't to be and the aircraft crashed onto the chapel. The cleaning lady, Mrs Kitchen, was in the building at the time. She walked out with not a scratch. She lived for years after on Acklington Road and may have survived to see the rebuilt chapel which re-opened about 1953.
The bravery of the Longstaff brothers is well known.
I surmise that a short cut on the circuit would be because of either/or damage to the controls or fuel shortage.

I discovered this thread while researching my Great-Uncle, William Bell Slater, and believe that he is the Will Slater mentioned. I didn't realise that so many people from the Broomhill/Amble area emigrated to Australia.

Does anyone know if the Broomhill Christian Mission was actually instrumental in organising the emigrations? On the face of it, it doesn't seem likely as the families in Janwhin's thread, that I've been able to track down so far, appear to have moved anywhere between 1910 and 1925.

Undoubtedly, many of them will have known each other, probably working in the pits at Broomhill, Chevington, Radcliffe etc. and so if you were thinking of starting a new life somewhere else it was probably natural to go to a place where you knew there was a community of people that you already knew and that there was work for you to go to. Still, life must have been pretty hard at that time for so many of them to move to the other side of the world!

I distant relative in Australia suggested that I look at this site called TROVE
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/search?adv=y It is an Australian Government site, run by the National Library, with newspapers from throughout Australia all available online and for free - they are fully searchable. So if anyone is tracing Australian family members this is probably a good site for info on them.
It is being added to all the time and contains newspapers from around Australia - all for free.

I don't believe the Mission was instrumental in the emigrations, although a common thread was the families' Methodism. My great grandfather was sponsored by two ex Broomhill residents, Walter and John Arnott (Togston Terrace).
The Arnotts and their extended family had gone to Western Australia in 1906. Their daughter Margaret was married to William Slater!
There must have been ongoing correspondence between the Arnotts and the Beverleys if they sponsored them in 1913. The local newspapers were pushing emigration to Australia and Canada too.
The local newspaper article in 1906 stated that the Arnotts were responding to the "Westralian" government's opening up of new districts in small blocks to "suit the enterprising colonist."
Here's the group photograph in Western Australia, along with watering cans:)

What a pity that we can't put names to the faces!
Sadly Margaret Slater (nee Arnott) died in 1920 and William then married Jane Wilson, the widow of George William Wilson in 1921. The Wilsons also emigrated to the Weston/Kurri Kurri area of NSW to work in the mines. George was killed in by a fall of stone at Hebburn Colliery (NSW not Tyne & Wear) in 1918.

And here's a photo of Hebburn Pit. My great uncle worked in the colliery offices there. We got the photo on a visit to the mining museum in Kurri Kurri last year.

This was the one I was really meaning to upload.....Hebburn No.1 pit :o

A Posting from RootsWeb
 

On 17/01/2010 17:28, Dee Dunn wrote:
> Please can anyone help with information regarding an event that occurred on the 21st December 1939 when a Hampden bomber returning to RAF Acklington crashed into the Chapel at North Broomhill, Northumberland, on the edge of the aerodrome. The bomber was from 49 Squadron and was short of fuel and having problems. As a result, the pilot was seriously injured and sadly two members of the crew were killed.

That must be the sanitized "official" version of the story. In truth
is that this was an early case of "friendly fire" or "blue on blue"
as the military prefer. As I report at

http://www.ne-diary.bpears.org.uk/Inc/ISeq_02.html#D110

"A British Hampden bomber, shot down in error by Spitfires of 602
Squadron, crashed on to the Church of Christ, Togston Terrace,
Amble. The church was demolished. One person was killed and one
was injured. Of the bomber's crew, one was uninjured, one was
seriously injured and two were killed."

This was dreadful incident in which Spitfires based at Drem
engaged Hampden bombers of based at Scampton and Waddington
as they returned from a difficult mission to find and attack the
pocket battleship "Deutschland" which had been reported off
Norway.

As the bombers of 44, 49 and 83 Squadrons returned from their
mission, short of fuel and in bad visibility, they decided to
make for Acklington instead of their home bases, but they were
misidentified by radar operators who scrambled the Spitfires
from 49 and 602 Squadrons and Hurricanes from 43 Squadron.

The Hampdens from 49 Squadron were intercepted by the Hurricanes
but were correctly identified and escorted to a safe landing at
Acklington. The remainder of the Hampdens were engaged by three of
the Spitfires before they were identified as British. Two of the
bombers were shot down into the sea, though all but one of the
crews survived and were rescued by fishermen. A third Hampden,
damaged and out of fuel, tried to reach Acklington, but struck
Christ Church and burst into flames.

A fourth Hampden, not involved in the friendly fire, made a forced
landing in a field near Belford.

Brian
--
Brian Pears (Gateshead, UK) http://www.bpears.org.uk/
Joint List Admin NORTHUMBRIA Genealogy Mailing List
GENUKI Northumberland Maintainer

Re: The Christian Mission, North Broomhill
 

:confused: Can I just add a little to this topic. Visitors to the site from outside of Northumberland may get confused about where the Christian Mission is. It is situated on Chapel Row, North Broomhill, just past the south east end of Togston Terrace. The chapel that the Hampden crashed onto in 1939, and rebuilt post war, is the Church of Christ, on the opposite side of the road from Togston Crescent.
I haven't been near the Christian Mission for several years I must confess but, viewing on Google Earth shows it to be in a bad state of repair.
Just thought I would try and clear any confusion. The two street names are very similar.

Derilda, thanks for the clarification it makes more sense in terms of my photograph. My dad was most likely baptised at the chapel but he only ever spoke about the church, because of it being flattened. I merged the two in my head :o

I don't know, one of my sisters lived in Turnbull's Buildings years ago and my uncle had a garage at the Acklington Road junction, opposite the church.

Re: Uncle's Garage
 

That would be Billy Whinham and Johnny Park. (Excuse if I have got spelling wrong) Their garage was on the west end of Togston Crescent and must have had a near miss when the Hampden crashed. I hope they were both out on their rounds when that happened.
They travelled various districts selling paraffin and all manner of goods that, usually, were not available to outlying areas. I also remember another occasion, when Herbie Smailes' garage had a major blaze, just a little up Acklington Road from them. Possibly about 1947.

Yes, my uncle was Bill Whinham, he tended to visit the more remote country areas with his van, Johnny Park was more local to Broomhill.

hi again Coquet!
as usual looking through some old threads ,came across this one about the Hamden Bomber, i feel that i must mention that i had a grandstand view of this
crash. i was working for H.Smails at the time (only 15) i heard the planes coming in, and stood at the gate, watching them land, except this particular one.as he made to land a red flare came up,he then flew around to come back over the Trap (pub), the engines sounded ropey, he was losing height all the
time, just missed Broughs store then bang into the chappell .
being a young lad at the time i got a fright. the rest is what you have read about still makes me shiver when i think about it....

Astounding Pineman, never thought we'd see a first hand account on here.
I can't imagine what it must be like to be in the vicinity of an air-crash; and these planes an not small. Frighting.

Plane Crash D camber 1939
 

This article appeared in the Newcastle Chronicle in December 1939

Hadston-Green