In the 18th century the children of Shotley Bridge found new amusement. At the village well they drank water with a curious taste and then laughed at the grimacing faces of the drinkers. Records indicate that a “Hally Well” (from the Saxon hal – whole in heath) at Shotley Bridge had been there since time immemorial. The well at Shotley Bridge was to make its name in Victorian times, as with an upsurge in cholera and typhoid, fresh air and the drinking of spring water was claimed to be the solution for many of these illnesses. With the spa towns of Harrogate, Bath and Chester enjoying the economic benefits of this wave of ill health, local entrepreneur Jonathan Richardson, from Snows Green, who was always on the lookout for a moneymaking scheme, had the idea of turning Shotley Bridge into the very same thing.

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For centuries, the old spring at Shotley Bridge had bubbled away in a small natural basin, trickling 30 yards across moss and grass, before making its way into the river. Records show that in 1806 people had still been coming from miles around to collect the “spring water with the healing power” but shortly after this time for some reason it was filled in and the site drained. Richardson, on hearing the story some 30 years later and with the help of some of the older locals, set about tracing the old spring and also a second more potent water source, to be known as the “new well”, which was surrounded by trellis with a thatched roof. By the end of the year, work had started on the construction of a spa town that could rival Harrogate, Buxton or Bath on the site of the current cricket club grounds on the banks of the Derwent.

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Shotley Bridge at the time was a small village with a population of about 500. The bridge itself dates back as far as the fourteenth century but with the building of the spa, the village was about to open its doors to people from all over the country. As its renown grew, so demand for accommodation grew and the people of Snows Green Road began to rent lodgings to accommodate the influx. Two cottages (bath houses) were erected a short distance from the water outflow, one containing a meeting room and the other two bathrooms, tiled in white with mahogany borders. Sweeping carriage drives were laid, landscaped with ornamental gardens, then tennis courts, and a cricket ground; paths were laid and trees planted until it began to look like a natural park and was named the ‘Spa Grounds’. (And is still called this today.) A large hotel was built by Jonathan Richardson in 1840, two years after the spa’s opening, also many other smaller properties, later including a mansion for himself, named Shotley Park (now sheltered accommodation for the elderly) in 1842, with a road leading directly to the spa.

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Initially, visitors started to arrive from Wearside, Newcastle and Tyneside, then as facilities improved, from further afield. As the spa’s reputation grew, it began to draw some nationally famous figures, including in 1839 the 27-year-old Charles Dickens, a friend of writer Robert Smith Surtees, who resided in nearby Hamsterley Hall. The low road was built in 1843 by a consortium of local businessmen led by the Annadale family, linking the spa to the newly constructed Scotswood Bridge, which increased the flow of visitors further.

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In 1867 a rail link was put in place between Blaydon and Consett. Elm Park station had a zoo next to it housing many exotic birds and animals, catering for the many visitors regularly travelling to the area. Although some way from the spa, visitors were transported in horse-drawn carriages down through Snows Green past Swiss cottages and down through the gatehouse of the spa. One story attached to the zoo is a tale about a wolf which went on a killing spree on escaping from its enclosure. A party of hunters was formed to capture the beast which was tracked all the way to Cumwhinton near Carlisle, where it was discovered dead on a railway line, having been hit by a train. The story has it that the wolf killed 43 sheep along the way.

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Records show that in the 1890s, in one of the spa’s busiest years, 60,000 people visited the grounds. The village prospered for almost 60 years, many more grand properties were built in the village by industrialists from outside the area as it became a more desirable place to live. Richardson, a successful entrepreneur, who had made all this happen, was treated as a local hero, but unwittingly was about to contribute to its downfall. The demise of Shotley Spa came quickly, as within two years of the spa’s opening and after extensive water analysis, the very mineral that gave the water its distinct taste was in the ironstone discovered by geologists in the Blue Heaps higher up the valley. Richardson, who was still on the lookout for business opportunities, financed the building of the ironworks, but within a few years, the great industrial edifice created in Berry Edge, Consett, was drawing ever nearer to the Derwent valley, pushing up plumes of dark smoke and beginning to dominate the skyline. Also contributing to the murk was the Shotley Bridge Gas Works, which opened in 1856 on a site adjacent to the spa. Richardson’s vision of creating the largest ironworks in England had contributed along with the Gas Works to the spa’s demise. Neither of them were exactly in keeping with the genteel world of Shotley spa. As the ironworks prospered, the number of visitors at the spa dwindled and eventually dried up. Richardson died on Christmas day in 1871 in his home at Shotley Park surrounded by his family. Although his spa failed to live beyond the turn of the century, his legacy lived on in the ironworks.

Streamer fishing
I have fished many different styles and methods on the Derwent over the years, experimenting with rods as short a 5ft 6in to rods of over 10ft, depending on what I was trying to achieve. It’s strange to think that after more than 35 years of fishing I am still learning new techniques. (Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?) I thought I’d tried everything until a chance meeting with Jon Barnes. I was introduced to Jon while fishing on the Derwent in the early 90s, a few years before he won the British rivers championship, but it wasn’t until about four years ago that I actually started to fish with him. Jon and I have fished together on many rivers over the last few years, from Yorkshire up to Scotland. He was influential in helping me catch my biggest ever wild trout on the River Tweed, a brownie of some 57cm. (But I’ll save that story for another day!) Jon is a very technical angler; whenever I meet up with him, he seems to be fishing a different technique – whether it’s Polish nymphing, short line nymphing or even just dry fly fishing, he always seems to put his own twist on things.

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It is very easy to get set in your ways, using tried and tested methods that catch you fish and feel comfortable with and I’m as guilty of this as anyone. But what if some of these new methods work better, catch you more fish or even just give you pleasure while doing them, then why not broaden your horizons? Let’s face it, if we didn’t try a new technique once in a while it would be as dull as golf. Remember, it’s meant to be about the pleasure it gives you; we’re not feeding our families on trout anymore. Some fishermen like nothing better than to sit on the river bank and watch the world go by for an hour or two, before returning back to the rat race, and I often wonder what people who don’t fish daydream about. As John Gierach put it, “They say you forget your troubles on a trout stream, but that’s not quite it. What happens is that you begin to see where your troubles fit into the grand scheme of things, and suddenly they’re just not such a big deal anymore.”

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Most people I speak to love to fish dry fly and I’m not disputing its popularity – it’s certainly my favourite way of fishing – but some people also claim to be purists, fishing nothing else, even when there’s no fly hatch or even trout rising. This is where I draw the line and think of another means of catching them. One such method Jon introduced me to was streamer fishing, which is hardly fly fishing in the pure sense of the word and something I’d dismissed years before as a crude form of lure fishing. Watching Jon though, I realised that on a hot summer day when very little is happening, you can still manage to winkle out a few fish from the deepest darkest places and save yourself from a blank day.

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The way we fish it is to use a long rod, maybe 9ft or so, with a short leader of, say, 6ft, sometimes with braided sink tip added when fishing very deep pools. The mechanics of this method is not crucial; as in most fishing situations, it’s more about presentation of the fly. Speaking of the fly, and I use this term very loosely, I usually start with a 4mm tungsten bead head, a hare’s ear body and a long cream badger cock cape feather at least two inches long. (When the feather is wet it becomes streamlined, acting like a small fry or an elver as it darts back and forth through the water.) This is hardly a pattern to get excited about when you’re sitting at your tying vice on a winter’s night, as it literally takes seconds to tie. Obviously you can use any streamer or fry pattern or even sculpin if you wish. Now to find a stretch of river suitable to fish this technique: the section I described earlier, from the Dry Rocks to the King’s Head, is ideal, with its sudden drop-offs, deep pots, weirpools and back eddies all perfect places for a trout to lie in.

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Cast your fly to a likely looking spot where you think the fish is lying. There’s no need for too much finesse with this method; basically you are prospecting for a trout with a short fuse! Let your fly sink to where you estimate the bottom few inches of the river bed is, without picking up weed. (This is why you need a heavy tungsten bead on the fly – to get it down in fast-flowing water). Then pull or even rip the fly quickly, making jerky movements, flicking the rod tip slightly as you go to give the fly life. You must wear polarised glasses, as you need to see the fly coming up through the depths. The secret here is to speed up your retrieve if you do get a follow – this helps to induce the trout into taking the fly. Trout are very territorial and dropping something that resembles food into their lie and then making it look as if it is trying to escape stirs the predatory instinct in him. If it looks like food, then why not chase, kill it, and see if it’s good to eat? The takes can be quick and quite explosive at times, so be ready for some fun. Jon has many excellent clips of him demonstrating these and many more methods all filmed on the River Derwent, (I’m even on one of them myself) just type” jonfish 1357” into YouTube and learn from an expert.