Where the art is (From The Northern Echo)

Where the art is

9:53am Thursday 13th November 2008

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The Spennymoor Settlement was set up in 1931 to give the jobless diversion, education and hope.

Now, as it plans an official reopening after a £250,000 facelift, the colourful history of the so-called Pitman’s Academy has finally been set down in print.

IT WAS nicknamed the Pitman’s Academy, though any could enrol. Today it would probably be the University of Spennymoor, offer degree courses in media studies and multiculturalism and have Mr Tony Benn as its chancellor.

Officially it was the Spennymoor Settlement, opened on April 1, 1931, in the south-west Durham town said to be among the most distressed in the country.

“A squat centipede of a town,” someone called it, a little curiously, for Spennymoor seemed hardly to have a leg to stand on. The aim was to give to the 35 per cent unemployed diversion, education and hope.

Its alumni include the celebrated “pitman”

artists Norman Cornish and the late Tom McGuinness, the writer and playwright Sid Chaplin (1916- 86) and Arnold Hadwin, who attended the playgroup when he was four, became editor of the Evening Despatch in Darlington and was the man who gave me my first job.

A former Royal Marine commando, Arnold will be 80 in a few weeks and remains fit, active, committed and histrionic. “I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without the influence of the Settlement,” he said.

It was Arnold, too, who sent the invitation to last Friday evening’s launch of an inspired new book by Robert McManners and Gillian Wales, chronicling the Settlement’s history – an offer we couldn’t refuse.

The Settlement movement was funded with £2m from the US-based Pilgrim Trust – about the cost at the time of building the Queen Mary, Dr Mc- Manners suggested.

The intention was that the educated or better-off would live – “cheek by jowl” said Bob – alongside the poorer or more disadvantaged. In Spennymoor, where the Settlement had taken over a former shop in King Street, they made uncomfortable bedfellows.

The local lads, it’s chronicled, were a bit upset to find a common room – who were they calling common?

– and not best pleased, either, to discover that Bill Farrell, the full-time leader, had the title warden.

Didn’t they have those in Durham jail?

Bill Farrell was a remarkable chap, for all that, an actor first sent to the North-East to study the effects of the Depression on his profession, His impact was huge, and lasting, the Settlement (said Mrs Wales) a fountain of cultural opportunity. By the end of the first year, there were 250 adult and 100 junior members.

Soon there was everything from sketching to psychology, a lending library – though Farrell thought Spennymoor’s tastes in literature “deplorable” – and a current affairs group, which later became the wireless listening group.

Jack Maddison, the sub-warden, was a Coundon lad who’d studied economics and political theory and even held outreach classes in surrounding villages.

They even had parliamentary-style debates, the speaker (Farrell) preceded into the chamber not by the mace, but by a miner’s pick.

Sid Chaplin, his literary tastes a little more refined, was a miner at Dean and Chapter colliery in Ferryhill who literally got on his bike after hearing about the lending library.

The Settlement, he later wrote, was like manna in the wilderness – “my highway to scholarship and the arts.”

The sketching club flourished, too – “They’re just like real paintings,” someone told one of the budding artists – with visitors from all over Britain to its exhibitions.

THE young Norman Cornish was at first told to come back when he was 15 and finally admitted in 1936. Bill Farrell had seen his potential.

“One young man has shown of late a distinct talent for portraiture. We expect much of him and only regret our inability to send him away to one of the larger schools of art,” he wrote in his 1939 annual report.

Norman’s 89 next week, recently made an MBE, still paints every day, still as bright burnished as a netty handle. The fifth joint effort from Bob Mc- Manners and Gillian Wales will be his autobiography, to be published on his ninetieth birthday.

The Everyman Theatre, for which the Settlement is now best known, opened in 1939 – Bill Farrell anxious that its users learned practical theatre skills first. “The dilettante, suburban mannequin parade of actor or actress is not encouraged,” he wrote.

Though formal funding finished in 1954, it not only continues but has bright ambitions for the future.

Work’s nearly complete on a £250,000 facelift, stage lighting alone costing £23,000, the first major development since the curtain first rose. Though it’s more of a community centre these days, much else goes on, too.

Dave Acock, the chairman and project manager, reckoned to have been there every day for the past two years. That afternoon he’d been cleaning the loos. “Someone has to do it,” he said.

Next spring they plan an official reopening, hope that it may be by the Prince of Wales, 75 years after a visit by the then Prince – later Edward VIII – in 1934.

For Bill Farrell, however, the Settlement experiment ended in deep disappointment. When Durham County Council withdrew funding in 1954, he was obliged himself to sign on the dole, aged 59 and with little prospect of new work.

“The wheel has come full circle,” he wrote.

“Twenty three years ago I came here to study the effects of unemployment and I was young, healthy and fairly wealthy. Now I’m only healthy, but suppose should be very grateful for that.”

Matters worsened when a new committee not only declined his voluntary services, but appointed a plumber as honorary warden and obliged Farrell and his wife Betty to leave their flat.

Though in later life they had an apartment in Ormesby Hall, near Middlesbrough, the experience left him embittered. For Bill Farrell, it wasn’t a just Settlement at all.

■ Bob McManners is the Bishop Auckland GP whose retirement after 33 years we chronicled in July. Gillian Wales has recently retired as manager of Bishop Auckland town hall.

Sadly, though now on the mend, Bob has had ill health of his own since then – a fall followed by a heart attack. The injured arm from the fall has, however, added yet another string to his bow – he can now sign books left-handed.

It’s called Way to the Better, costs £12, is stylishly and sympathetically and richly illustrated – not least with many of Norman Cornish’s wonderful works. No one, said Bob McManners, ever painted a pint of beer better than Norman Cornish did.

Bishop’s gays just love the lollipops

SPENNYMOOR settled, we headed down the road to Bishop Auckland. Two jobs in one evening: Arnold Hadwin would have been impressed.

Bishop town centre hasn’t always been the most agreeable place to be on Friday nights, a problem faced by Wear Valley District Council which is issuing doormen with metal detectors.

There was also talk of giving them penny lollies, with which to sweet talk the acerbic, but that one seems to have been licked by the credit crunch.

It was 9.30pm, cold and quiet. While the rest of us contemplate the pillow, the younger generation is just waking up.

On such a night, in truth, the council might better safeguard the health and safety of the scantily-clad citizens by issuing them with top coats.

Alec McCoy, Wear Valley’s commercial manager, was a policeman in Shildon in the days when most folk not only knew the polliss by his first name but probably knew his number, an’ all.

Now he’s responsible for everything from bingo halls to pizza places, taxi ranks to tattoo parlours.

“We aim to ensure that the town’s safe for all generations to enjoy themselves,” he said.

Stuart Joyce, manager of the Monaco bar, reckoned the town fairly quiet. At least it had been until the night before. Who loves ya, he keeps a jar of penny lollies but usually only for gay night. “They just seem to like them,” he said.

Nothing to detect at all, we headed home at 10.30.

Hallowe’en had passed, but there was a danger of turning into a pumpkin.

Tears at Tyne Tees Television?

IT’S certainly going to be lively on the night of Thursday, January 15, at St James’ Park, Newcastle – the venue for a reunion of Tyne Tees Television staff, 50 years to the day since the station went on air.

The bash will be led by Bill Lyon- Shaw, the original programme controller, now 95, and attended by stillfamiliar names like Tom Coyne, Mike Neville, Bill Hamilton, Marianne Foster – the weather girl – Bob Langley and Neville Wanless.

They’ve also compiled a “lookback”

film. “Bring your own Kleenex,” it says.

Only two of the 209 attending took part in Tyne Tees’s first show – former head of sport George Taylor and George Romaines, forever Shildon’s Singing Son. Bill Lyon-Shaw was the producer.

Reminiscence and champagne are likely to flow in equal measure, says George. The column has somehow wangled an invitation, too. Much more later.

FULL steam ahead, as usual, veteran Darlington councillor Peter Freitag rings following this week’s grounding of the QEII. It was a case of maritime history repeating itself, says Peter.

Sixty years ago, his father was on the original Queen Elizabeth when it hit a sandbank off Southampton.

“Everyone had to be taken off by tender,”

he recalls.

“My sister and I were taken down from London by chauffeur driven Studebaker – DOR 360, funny the things you remember – to see it.”

This week’s events attracted little attention. Back then, says Peter of the Queen Elizabeth, it was huge.

GEOFF Thomas arrived back at St Teresa’s hospice in Darlington yesterday afternoon after his 25,000 mile motorbike marathon to deliver his parents’ ashes. It’s going to make a great story for the Riders’ Digest.

Geoff’s 45 – “old enough to know better and young enough not to let that bother me”. His destination, as previous columns have observed, was his brother’s place in Boonville, California.

The ride also aimed to raise funds for the hospice, which cared for both George and Barbara Thomas, his parents.

Since the column spent yesterday at the annual lunch of the Northern Showmen’s Guild in Durham – a turn with those guys next week – a catchup with Geoff has also had to wait.

The ultimate destination, the one he had to come back for, was the Ace Café. We may join him there for breakfast.

AJOURNEY only slightly less time consuming, we caught the No 1 bus on Saturday from Darlington to Tow Law. It took an hour and 38 minutes. The previous Saturday we’d travelled by Eurostar from London to Paris, just 50 minutes longer.

While Tow Law has its compensations, the bus ride isn’t among them.

No 1 it may still be, top of the pops it aint.

…and finally, farewell to Maurice Metcalfe, a dedicated and inspiring Methodist local preacher since 1952, who has died, aged 85.

He particularly loved Pierremont Methodist church in Darlington where a memorial service will be held at 2.15pm tomorrow, following his funeral.

“I’m a bit old but it’s a very friendly church, this. There’s a great love for one another here,” he told the At Your Service column last year.

That column described him as magnificent; so he was.

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