The story of Sir Daniel Gooch (Engineer & Politician) b. 1816, Bedlington, Northumberland.
From the excellent series of documentaries ‘On the Rails’ starring Mark Williams of Harry Potter fame; Mr Williams covers the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and his locomotive engineer the young Daniel Gooch.
Please click this link to view the YouTube clip.
Thanks, RH.
Please find below a link to view the role of Sir Daniel Gooch in the laying of the first successful transatlantic Cable in 1866, which revolutionised transatlantic communication!
Gooch played an important role, through the purchase of the Great Eastern, Brunels’ visionary ship and allowed its use to lay the cable.
For more information, please Click HERE: http://atlantic-cable.com/Article/Gooch/
Thanks, ABTRA Committee.
Hello all,
Thank you to everyone who has offered supportive messages for my attempt to raise awareness of Sir Daniel in his home town of Bedlington, Northumberland and about him more generally both in the U.K. & possibly more internationally.
I unfortunately can’t continue on my own trying to research then publish information on this blog, on the Gooch 200 website, and also on the ABTRA Gooch page, due to other commitments on my time. However, I would like to enquire if any local people in Bedlington and its surrounding area, or perhaps more widely would like to become involved and help me through ABTRA (the Ashington, Blyth and Tyne Railway Association) then please do!
I suggested that the Daniel Gooch project be brought under the ABTRA fold as not only was he born in the area, but he has a strong family connection to the Longridges of Ironwork and Enginework fame in Bedlington, and became a well known Locomotive engineer in his own right. In addition, joining with ABTRA also means that we have the potential to raise funds to carry out small projects, and both projects I feel would mutually benefit one another.
Any help would be very welcome, even if just to send through useful website links or read a bit about him and his family to pull together the knowledge about him. As Chairman of ABTRA, I’ll be raising this at our next Committee meeting, to see if we can form a Sub-Committee dedicated to Sir Daniel and hopefully begin to make a headway in publicising him in time for his 201st birthday!
If you are in any way interested, please email: abtra.membership@outlook.com
More news to come shortly so please keep visiting!
Thanks, RH.
Reading the Introduction to Wilsons’ SDG Memoirs and Diary (1972), young Daniel was seemingly well placed and timed at his birth for the early developments with steam locomotion.
In 1816, locomotives running on rails had been around for 12 years (Thevithick in 1804 had a somewhat successful locomotive), but was yet to gain full recognition of its ability.
He was also born in the heart of the area which developed the early locomotives, the Great Northern Coalfield; ohe was born just a short distance north of Killingworth and Wylam; areas famous by the exploits of one George Stephenson.
Indeed George was a regular visitor to the Gooch household in Daniels’ childhood, and by the age of 9, the Stockton and Darlington had been opened; with the line using the ‘Bedlington Rail’ developed by John Birkinshaw.
These strong connections stood young Daniel in good stead for his future achievements, which is the subject of future posts!
From the ABTRA Committee meeting today, the group is hopefully going to start working on raising awareness locally of Sir Daniel, as one of its projects, please see the ABTRA blog post about it here: ABTRA blog: Forging New Links: Daniel Gooch and beyond.
More on this soon, RH.
For any story about a famous person, it makes sense to first talk about their parents. It was the coming together of Mr John Gooch, and Miss Anna Longridge both born on 17th March 1783, which lead to the famous Gooch family (for there was more than just Gooch who achieved some notable feats during their lifetime).
John and Anna were to be married on the 23rd December 1805, Anna was daughter of Thomas Longridge, the Longridge family having an intimate association with Bedlington Ironworks, as well as the Stephenson family of locomotive and railway fame.
At the ages of 29, in the thundery early hours of the 24th August 1816, John and Anna brought into the world the young Daniel Gooch, who would later work with such famous people as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, lay a cable which connected the Old World and the New, as well as steer the GWR back into prosperity. A remarkable man born in Bedlington, possibly then still part of Durham, but now Northumberland!
If you’d like to know more about Brunel, who was a mere 10 years older than Daniel Gooch, please see his own ‘Brunel200‘ which is available by clicking the link in blue.
Thanks, RH.
Hello all,
Please note that Daniel Gooch is now present on Instagram (@danielgooch1816), so if you are on Instagram please follow us!
In other news, the website should soon see more more information about Sir Daniel, but for now the button to link to this blog has been improved as well as a button to ABTRA, a group working to preserve rail heritage in the Bedlington, Blyth, Ashington and Tyneside area, hopefully Sir Daniel may come under its wing once discussed at their Committee Meeting in February.
Hope to see you visit again soon!
Yours, RH.
As a taster to my previous blog post, a little snippet from YouTube where a historian debates which engineer REALLY built the Great Western Railway (GWR).
YouTube link here!
Thanks, R.
Well, here we are in 2017 already! Apologies for the slow pace of trying to raise interest in Sir Gooch, time has been filled with many other tasks which have had to take a back-seat.
However, one new years’ resolution is to try and make more use of the website, blog and the associated Social Media for Sir Daniel, so hopefully he’s a bit better known by his 201st birthday than his 200th
If you haven’t already, please visit the website at www.gooch200.com and have yourself a little read about him, and hopefully on here I’ll try to put small snippets about his life and achievements on a more regular basis than in the past.
That’s it for now as a cup of tea is in order and time to perhaps peruse the bookcase while I’m sipping away…
Ta ta for now, R.
Well, in comparison to that awful thunderstorm 200 years and a few hours ago in Bedlington, the weather is hot but skies are a beautiful clear blue this morning!
It is of course the day to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Daniel Gooch, a man with a remarkable legacy, more on his achievements in coming blogs!
Yours, R.
Sir Daniel Gooch 