14/11/2011 Inside Out North East and Cumbria

In the next half-an-hour, they are beautiful, they are listed and

they've disappeared. I'm on the trail of a vanishing Northern

treasure. There's some really good bedfellows in the north here. The

swing bridge in Newcastle, Carlisle railway station, the transporter

bridge in Middlesbrough. If they were to disappear suddenly then we

would be all up in arms. Charlie Charlton gets a rude awakening as

she discovers what's stopping thousands of us from getting a good

night's sleep. Hello. How are you? And we shine a light on changes at

a northern children's charity that has tackled poverty for more than a

century. One day my mother came into the ward. She had asked the

nurse which was her son, because she'd never seen me up for such a

long time. Stories from the heart of the North East and Cumbria. This

If Morpeth clock tower were to vanish from the local landscape,

well, you can imagine the uproar. But that's exactly what's happened

to one of our most prized treasures in the North East and Cumbria.

What's more, it's disappeared with tens of thousands of pounds of

public money. Inside Out viewers Quite beautiful. They caught your

eye. For them just to disappear is criminal. People may not have

noticed in the past when they were there, but you certainly notice

when they are not there. They are beautiful, they are ornate, they

are historic. We are very cross, The gates were last seen in 2004,

but how could they just vanish? Where are they now and can we get

them back? I'm on a mission to find out, but first I need to know more

about them. It's a bit of a mystery how these gates ended up at

Hartford Hall. Here at the Northumberland Record Office there

isn't much written about them but there are some photographs. They

make them look pretty foreboding. There's a sign saying private

grounds, no admittance. They weren't very welcoming really. But

I have found this book about the craftsmanship. It said good work

but maybe a little OTT even for Victorian times. It says, "this

work is in deadly earnest, and deadly is the governing word." So

it seems they were impressive, these gates, but not to everyone's

taste. But they were a masterpiece worthy of a Grade 2 star listing by

English Heritage. This is really and truly a national treasure, they

are really very special. It's very much in the top 7% of the quality

listed buildings we have in this country. Within that category there

are some really good bedfellows in the north. We have the swing bridge

in Newcastle, Carlisle railway station and we also have another

bridge which is the transporter bridge in Middlesbrough. If they

were to disappear suddenly I think we would all be up in arms.

Hartford Hall, near Bedlington, was a glorious country house and

grounds that became a rehabilitation centre for injured

miners. When it closed it fell into disrepair, so badly in fact it was

put on the Heritage At Risk Register. A developer seemed to

have the answer, building an exclusive housing estate which

would pay for the refurbishment of the old hall and allow the gates to

be sent away for restoration. But the company collapsed owing �10

million. The gates never returned. But I have tracked them down to an

industrial estate in North Yorkshire where they've been

As far as English Heritage are concerned they should be celebrated

now. Instead, they are stuck in this warehouse. They represent a

tremendous work of art. The Coalbrookdale Company who made them

in the 1870s were among the world's leading exponents of cast-iron art,

which is how it was regarded at the time. That is just fantastically

perfect detail. To cast it, it's 3D, it's got nooks and crannies, it's

really difficult stuff. It's been done by a process which is not

clear to moulders nowadays. Playful designers had a field day, adding

some very quirky details. It's been moulded directly from somebody's

hand. Really? And what about the workmanship, it looks lifelike.

is superb. You can virtually get your fingernail under the

fingernails of the person whose hand it was. It looks like you can

almost see the fingerprints from when it was first made, it's that

fine and lifelike. Have you seen anything like this before? No.

can get a real sense of what we are missing by looking at another set

made by the same company. Thousands of people pass by every day and

admire these ornamental gates close to the Albert Hall in London.

Coalbrookdale made these gates for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The

sole intention was to amaze visitors from home and abroad. A

showpiece of British craftsmanship. But as resplendent as these gates

are here in Hyde Park, in heritage terms they are not as important as

The Hartford gates were made for the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873.

They were to stand at the entrance to the British pavilion, and I've

obtained a hitherto unknown picture taken at that time. Don't be fooled

by the scale. The pavilion is several storeys high. The gates

were 12 ft tall and contemporary accounts reveal they were painted

chocolate and gold. On closer inspection, there is the life-size

At Chris Topp's workshop they were able to repair some of the damage

caused by the harsh Northumberland winters. Here, they fashion the

iron by hand rather than pour it into a cast. Both techniques were

used by Coalbrookdale and it appears these gates weren't built

to last. Because the gates were probably assembled in a hurry for

the exhibition, they probably didn't take too much notice of

coating or protecting the wrought iron where it passed through the

cast-iron. So we've got a certain amount of corrosion that's crept in

there over the years. This is the sort of condition that all of this

metal work was in when we first saw it. As the true state of the gates

was revealed, the costs went up and it led to a dispute. The bills

unpaid, work stopped and then the developer went out of business. The

gates are stuck in limbo, caught up in a legal and financial mess every

bit as complicated as the design work on the gates themselves.

English Heritage, who listed the gates, gave thousands of pounds in

grant money to the developer just before he failed. Northumberland

County Council is supposed to enforce listed building protection

and insist on the gates' return. But both became powerless the

moment the business went into administration. Of all the parties

involved in the contentious wrangle over the gates, only English

Heritage refused to go on camera. It lost �23,5000 of public money. I

wanted to know why it gave a grant to the developer at Hartford Hall,

even though it was well aware of a catalogue of delays and disputes in

the restoration project. And it was no secret the development was in

financial trouble. In a statement it said, English Heritage decided

to release an interim payment to break the deadlock. But when the

funds were paid to Hartford Hall estate the account was frozen by

the bank. Our primary concern is the gates are repaired and returned

and that the public money paid in good faith is not lost. I don't

have any money. We've got creditors at the top of the ranking who are

not going to be paid �5 million, and we've got other creditors who

are unsecured who won't be seeing any money. Regrettably, English

Heritage is one of those creditors. So their money has gone?

Regrettably, their money has gone. So what next? One reason people

have been reluctant to buy the estate from the administrator is

that any new owner will have to spend �1 million to comply with

outstanding planning regulations. Nevertheless, one has stepped

forward. But it all hinges on getting permission to build more

houses on the estate. The developer has taken an immense amount of time

in putting the scheme together and has explored all the options and

discovered this way will allow him to release the money is to make

sure that everything happens. take it that if you get planning

permission you are promising to get those gates back? We will get the

gates back, they will get restored and we are looking forward to

putting the chocolate and gold colours back on to them. But as

much as the current residents want their gates back, they say more

homes is too high a price to pay and they will object to any more

development. They want the administrator to cut his losses,

hand the estate over to them and they will raise the funds they need.

Why would we need 23 new houses to get the gates repaired? The only

reason that a developer wants to put more houses here is so they can

make money, not so they can return the gates. The best chance we have

of getting the gates back is the residents to take control and raise

the money to get them back. If the administrator can't find a buyer

and isn't prepared to hand the estate over to the residents for

nothing, the land could end up reverting to the Crown, which would

lead us no further forward. One thing is sure, unless someone

becomes the new owner of Hartford Hall then part of our heritage will

simply gather dust in a North Yorkshire shed. We've still got two

more fascinating stories from the region to come. I do hope you're

not thinking of going to bed just yet. But when you do, will you

sleep well? A recent report suggests that noisy nights are

costing lives as well as sleep. But help is at hand. BBC Newcastle's

Charlie Charlton has agreed to don her pyjamas to visit the North

I sleep when the world is awake. And I get up in the middle of the

night. A good night's kip ruined by the noisy world just outside my

bedroom. Does it always have to feel like this? There are some who

think not. There's a brand new Sleep Research Centre in the North

East. And they believe it might be possible to combat the problem of

noise disturbing our sleep. And I am going to be one of their guinea

Alfie Joey and Charlie Charlton at breakfast. BBC Newcastle, radio for

Starting work at 5am is the price that my co-presenter and I pay for

a job we love it. I get up at 3:40am. 3.40am, otherwise known as

stupid o'clock. And then go to bed when often Eastenders hasn't even

been on. You go to sleep at 7:45pm, that takes some discipline!

problem is the noises outside my bedroom when I'm just trying to get

some sleep. What noises do you hear? You've got the strimmer. Kids

playing, the cats. But I think there are certain noises you just

can't block out. It's a party you are not invited to. I want to be in

that party. You've got sleep to do! There's little peace and quiet in

our towns and cities these days, and it's getting noisier. A recent

report claimed that one in five of us is regularly exposed to sound

levels at night that could significantly damage our health. In

some cases triggering premature illness and even death. You've got

a choice of bedrooms. The new Sleep Research Centre at Northumbria

University. One of its first experiment is on the impact of

noise on sleep. This is Dr Jason Ellis. His aim is to get a better

understanding of how we block out certain sounds when we are snoozing.

He calls it gating. We've got CCTV just so that we can keep an eye on

you during the night and make sure you are OK. The centre is the first

of its kind in the UK and is designed to look like a normal

apartment. Frankly, I've worn some strange outfits for investigations

but wearing my pyjamas is taking things to a new level! They haven't

made me wear a hairnet yet. The centre's mission is to develop a

better understanding of the causes of insomnia. And that means

studying volunteers like me, using electrodes to measure brain waves.

After we've made sure you are physically asleep, we are going to

play some things during the night. It is quite cutting edge. To be

honest, nobody else is doing this, nobody else is trying to understand

what's happening in the brain during the sleep. All urban noise

causes sleep problems. What happens is our body tries to minimise its

impact. It tries to stop as hearing it, understanding it, processing it.

This is called gating. There are some people who are really good at

gating and there are other people who just don't have a great

capacity to do so. Eventually we will be able to create something

like a CD, or something that can go in the ear which will stop somebody

from losing that gating. So they'll be able to sit day or night without

any urban noise interfering. This room is really dark so it shouldn't

give you any problem whatsoever. This is now bedtime. Please tell me

it's bedtime. Absolutely, you can now go to sleep and we will be

watching you from afar. Just make yourself comfortable. Should I be

doing any counting? You can count back from 10. Right. It will do

absolutely nothing for you. I knew there'd be a catch. Night night.

I'll be watching you and I will see # I need some sleep, it can't go on

Over 40% of the population will have some form of sleep disorder.

Which is costing us at least �15 million a year in the NHS. This

centre in the North East is leading the world in terms of research, in

terms of practice. We are at the This is the first time that Charlie

gets to sleep. She gets to sleep at 10.55pm. It's her first block of

sleep. At 22.06 we have a major spike. There has been something in

the environment that has annoyed her. So her whole body is reacting

to this by trying to gate everything at once. This is a

really good example of how we gate. It's almost 2am and it's time to

test my gating. What we are about to do is play some noises of some

cats fighting. This should elicit There it is. This is the reaction.

What we can see here is Charlie actually hasn't woken up. Even

though she is being played this quite horrifying sound that did

create quite a gating. But her mind cooled it all down. And whilst I'm

in the land of nod, Jason has some tips to help all of us get that

If you are lying there drifting off, the easiest thing to do is find

something mentally challenging but Dark, cool, quiet but remove your

Top tip - if you are in bed for more than 15 minutes and you are

not asleep, get out. Go and do You slept really well last night.

It took you a little while to get off to sleep, about half-an-hour.

After that you went off to sleep. Half-an-hour? You caught up on all

of the refreshing sleep you need. It was almost like you stuck

together five power naps. Pretty impressive I have to say.

doesn't feel like good quality sleep at all. I feel really, really

BBC Newcastle, radio for the North I'm going to let you into a secret.

I didn't really get much sleep last night. Do you talk in your sleep?

OK. This is the overall picture of your night. Refreshed, I am back at

the lab to learn more about the results of my test. Just at 1:57am,

this is when we played our first noise to you. This is the one that

you remember. The cats. Cats! soon as we play the noise it

creates a big arousal in all areas of the brain. We can see that the

second time and the third time it is played it has less of an impact.

It is almost like your mind has started to take account of it and

blocks it out. How can this be of any use for other people?

purpose behind this research is to try to determine what kind of

things are happening within the brain. And that way we can actually

develop strategies and therapies like noise therapy or some form of

other learning therapies that people could play at night which

are not going to disrupt them but are actually going to help them get

It's already past my bedtime. I now know I'm pretty good at dealing

with the noisy world, but sound is a real problem for a lot of people

who can't gate like me. I'lll be able to see the little more soundly

tonight knowing that help for them The impact of children living in

poverty has been a hot topic this year. But for one North East

charity it has thought of nothing else for the past 120 years. How it

has gone about it has moved with the times. But I've uncovered some

remarkable archive of the charity's early days, and brought together

different generations of people Leon and Simon grew up in a

difficult family environment. If Walter and Irene hadn't taken them

on they'd be in care. You are supposed to say sorry. Say sorry to

Simon first. If you'd come here 12 months ago he would be just

everywhere, all over the place, really violently jumping all over

and ranting and raving. Changing their behaviour is no easy task.

But Bernadette is on hand. Remembering to be really clear with

what you are expecting them to do or not do. She is the modern face

of a charity that since Victorian days has tried to give children a

better chance in life. In its 120 years child poverty hasn't gone

away, it's just less obvious. don't know how many children go

without food. We don't know how many children are wearing the wrong

sized shoes. A third of children in the North East are in poverty but

you don't see it. It's all so different to the charity's

beginnings on the banks of the Tyne, where children lived and worked in

squalor. There was a lot of slum housing, some heavy industries like

whale blubber factories, tripe shops, chemical manure works. It

would have stunk. And so a shelter was set up to get the children off

the filthy streets. They were tempted in with magic lantern shows.

But what they really needed was fresh air. And so began the Poor

Children's Holiday Association. Over the years, thousands of kids

were taken to the seaside. They could fill their lungs, their

bellies and just enjoy themselves. But the charity's founding fathers

found many had tuberculosis, a potential killer. Something much

more ambitious was called for. In a revolutionary move for its day they

set up a specialist care centre for children with TB. We've unearthed

this remarkable footage of the sanatorium where children were

treated on an industrial scale. It was tucked away in the

Northumberland countryside, which meant for the young patients that

mums and dads soon became a distant memory. They said I had to go for

six months. They were just pushed into the van, everybody in, doors

shut and off they went. It was weeks and weeks until we saw our

parents again. I was lost, I didn't know where I was. Coming from the

fishing side and going into area where there were no boats to be

seen, getting off a little bus. I was looking about and didn't know

where I was. I was completely lost. The nurses appeared as prim and

proper as the uniforms. But underneath, they couldn't help but

take a shine to their patients. They were so cute. You definitely

did have your favourites. You took them to your heart. But with care

came discipline. And woe betide those who broke the rules. After

you had your lunch you used to go to bed and have two hours sleep. I

was talking quite a lot to the other children. The nurse, I could

hear her coming along the corridor. As soon as she had gone away I

would start again. The next thing I knew I was hoisted up in the bed

and a scarf wrapped around my mouth and tied to the bed rails. I was

gagged. I never said anything after that, I was quiet! Brian was the

middle of three brothers, all were admitted to Stannington. The eldest

had spinal problems and was strapped to his bed for two years.

The nurses told me I haven't to get up and move around. I was strapped

down, that was it. It must have done the job because one day my

mother came into the ward and she had to ask the nurse which was her

son. Because she had never seen me up for such a long time. It was

state-of-the-art. Some treatments now appear rather brutal, others

quirky. But this rediscovered footage is fascinating to today's

medics, who now have drugs to fight TB. Artificial light treatment.

That's a new one on me. I haven't heard about that. Many of these

children, especially in the North East, would not have had a huge

amount of exposure to sunlight. They would have had vitamin D

deficiency, they would have had rickets. That would have

predisposed them and made their tuberculosis worse. The sanatorium

is no more. As TB cases fell, the charity moved on. It has adopted a

21st century name and now tackles modern issues. Hi and welcome to

WEYES. Come and have a look at the project. Young people can drop in

to see us on a range of issues, specifically general health, mental

health and sexual health. They are scared of going to see a

professional for the first time, like going to see their GP or

practice nurse. They already have relationships built up with us as

their youth workers. They like us to support them, give them advice

and come in to see the nurse as well. The charity is also working

in schools. It helps children who may struggle to attend conventional

lessons learn about health issues and, importantly, gain a

qualification. Thinking about what stresses people out. Having no

money. Yes. Your friends say something that's not true.

Spreading rumours. That's a good one. It can happen quite a bit.

That can then lead into bullying as Education was also on the timetable

back at the sanatorium, but only two hours a day. Fresh air and

exercise were more of a priority... Within reason. They did not like

you running about. You couldn't play football. That was one thing I

used to miss. I used to like to play football. And they also missed

the nurses, who sometimes left the sanatorium before the patients.

They were saying, "We divvent want Staff and patients alike were well

fed. Good food was an essential part of the regime. And for the

patients it had a lasting effect. We all agreed that it wasn't very

nice, the porridge. It was a lumpy affair. Offer me a parsnip and I'll

hit you with it. Parsnips, oh! Although they grew up in different

centuries, healthy eating remains a core belief. And two months of

intense tuition by the charity has brought about subtle changes.

don't have high fatty food, now it's tuna sandwiches and things

like that. I now have more confidence in myself and I can do

more. I've learnt a lot, how to make a good, healthy wrap. I've

learned stuff about STDs and health. As they look to the future, Brian

and Ray are looking back to their medical records. Two brothers in

the sanatorium, aged five and nine months. Probably tuberculosis. They

did think it was TB. I've got a tear in my eye. I'm really

emotional about it. It seems to be pulling things out of my brain that

I had forgotten about. I never thought I would remember it again.

It is time to bring the generations together for a special viewing of

the old film, a time long before the NHS. Gosh, she was an old-

fashioned nurse. Look at that! That injection! I never got an X-ray.

used to put my chest up against a thing. You put your shoulders

forward. Your head on the top. youngsters were intrigued to know

more. How did so many children manage to get along? Did you make

friends? Oh, yes. I can't remember them now, I was only five at the

time. I can't remember seeing girls. No. They kept them separate. They

were on a different ward. before free health care, who picked

up the tab? Did you have to pay money for the treatment? I didn't.

It was subsidised by Northumberland County Council. Different

generations who been given a bit of extra care by the same charity.

Times have changed but over the last 120 years one thing hasn't

altered. The knowledge that to tackle deprivation you have to look

And that's it for tonight. Don't forget I've got more information

about the stories we cover on my blog, and you can also add your