Alms and the man

FIRSTLY to Redcar, sun high and glass of wine in hand, to help acknowledge the end of Peter Sotheran’s inspired and outstanding service to Sir William Turner’s Almshouses.

“I think we all know why we’re here,” Lesley Beer tells the gathering.

“To make sure the old devil goes,” says Peter.

Born in Guisborough in 1615, William Turner went to London, became a successful merchant tailor and, after the Great Fire, a restoring Lord Mayor – the model, some say, for Dick Whittington.

Endowed with £300, his “hospital”

offered a home to 20 elderly people and 20 orphans, though under rather stricter rules than perhaps apply three centuries later.

In the 1740s, persons “to be expelled”

were made to stand in the middle of the magnificent chapel in front of the assembled company, were stripped of their hospital clothes, dressed by the church warden and “turned out of the gates, the people standing on either side”.

The rules have changed, the almshouses quite splendidly remain – and Redcar, it might be said, has an enviable record in such respects.

A couple of miles down the road at Dormanstown – said in1917 to be “Redcar’s garden city” – the country’s first municipal old folks’ bungalows were opened. They stand yet, a blue plaque recording their place in social history.

The only problem at the almshouses, founded to support the poor, was that when Peter joined the trustees in 1990 they themselves were seriously on their uppers.

“We were nearly bankrupt; I don’t think the trustees even knew how to spell ‘budget’,” he recalls. “The almshouses had been locked in a time warp for almost half a century.”

Particularly after he became trustees’ chairman in 1998, fortunes were to change greatly for the better.

Grants, including £400,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, helped restore the 30 cottages at a cost of £1.6m; another £250,000 – £50,000 from John Paul Getty – transformed the historic courtyard and its surroundings.

In 2006, the sale of two antique chairs realised another £960,000 and a chandelier £360,000.

Though scaffolding around the tower indicates a work still in progress, the almshouses are social housing’s poor relations no longer.

Peter Sotheran ran the family stationery business, was made MBE in 2006 for services to the community, is anxious to give credit to his wife Sue. He stands down at the compulsory trustee retirement age of 70.

They gave him a whisky decanter set, which he vowed to put to good use. “He will be greatly missed,”

said Lesley, the new trustees’ chairwoman.

“Without Peter this place probably wouldn’t be here at all.”

WILLIAM HAGUE, who likes to tell constituency audiences of a meeting with a farmer who told him he’d get his vote only because the other bugger was worse still, appears to have even more remarkable abilities than the vast majority of Richmondshire supposes.

Daniel Finkelstein, a member of the backroom brigade when Hague was Conservative party leader, recalls in The Times a team meeting – “in an Indian restaurant somewhere near Catterick Garrison” – at which someone mentioned a date far in the future.

“A Monday,” said the leader, immediately.

Finkelstein, now a peer who also writes a football column called Fink Tank, began to test him. “March 26, 2044?”

A Friday, replied Hague immediately.

“October 13, 2031?” A Tuesday.

Aware that the youthful Hague had a certain geeky image, Finkelstein spotted the danger.

“Just one thing, William,” he said. “I want you to promise me never to do that trick in public. We’re in enough trouble already.”

Now he’s stepping down. Now, another Tuesday, it can be told.

FINKELSTEIN also recalls a meeting in the opposition leader’s office at which George Osborne held up a copy of that day’s paper with a picture of Hague and Jacques Chirac on the front page.

“Did you ever imagine,” asked Osborne, “that one day you’d be on the front page of the Financial Times next to the president of France?”

Hague looked at him, puzzled. “Of course I did, you idiot,” he said.

POOR Michael Gove, meanwhile, managed to lock himself in a toilet on the wrong voting lobby in the first day in his new job. Hague, now Leader of the House, defended his colleague vigorously. “Knowing who is in the toilets is an important part of any Chief Whip’s job. I take it as evidence that he was carrying out his duties very assiduously.”

IT’S because he enjoys the column’s occasional railway ramblings, that Brian Elstob in Riding Mill, Northumberland, sends this image, far left, of a sign spotted on Wirksworth station, part of the restored Ecclesbourne Railway in Derbyshire.

After the events of last week, of course, that could almost be a reference to the Government reshuffle, too.

MICHAEL FALLON, the new £134,565-a-year Defence Secretary, was MP for Darlington in the early 1980s.

On Friday afternoons he’d catch a train north before holding a constituency surgery. After that the two of us would go to the pub.

As hungry as he was ambitious, Michael in one memorable session downed four pints and five Mars Bars, they being the extent of the menu.

The prevailing jingle at the time supposed that a Mars a day helped you work, rest and play.

Though it said nothing about five a day, it appears not to have done the old boy any harm.

AGOOD week for women in the Church of England, too, but coincidental that we should be lunching with Janet Chapman just two days after the historic vote on female bishops.

A former curate of St Cuthbert’s in Darlington, Janet is now Canon Liturgist at Birmingham Cathedral, where the Dean is also a woman.

Janet’s husband, Peter, is a former head librarian at The Northern Echo and now spends his holidays as a crossing keeper on the Wensleydale Railway.

We ate at the celebrated Wensleydale Heifer in West Witton – food first class, price expensive (twocourse lunch £19.75), service dilatory in the extreme.

The BBC had reported that the first women could be ordained bishop early in 2015. We’d always thought that bishops were consecrated.

Which was correct?

Canon Chapman considered but briefly. “I’m on holiday,” she said, “ask me again next week.”

MUCH of the credit for steering the historic legislation is given to Justin Welby, the former Bishop of Durham who is now Archbishop of Canterbury.

A new biography records that the young Welby wasn’t always as focused. His chief memory of chapel at Eton is of the headmaster falling out of the pulpit; he got into Cambridge despite just C, D and E grades at A-level. It also notes that the future archbishop’s father was once engaged to Vanessa Redgrave.

Eventually exploring ordination, the successful oil company executive was told by the Bishop of Kensington that he had no future in the Church of England. Persevering, he was interviewed by a vicar who asked him what he would do when visiting a woman parishioner if she complained that the house gutter was blocked.

The great architect of equality had an immediate response. “I’d send my wife up a ladder,” he said. “She’s much better at DIY than I am."