DAVID MCKIE is a very fine writer, though it will be necessary ere the column’s done to take serious etymological issue with him.

Its author extolled, it is perhaps surprising that McKie’s Gazetteer: A Local History of Britain has for so long maundered unthumbed upon these shelves.

The book’s whimsical, idiosyncratic even. Under the heading of Streatlam – “Streatlam and Stainton, parish, Durham, two-and-a-half miles north-east of Barnard Castle” – we belatedly come across the scandalous story of Mary Eleanor Bowes, late 18th Century mistress of Streatlam Castle and Her Majesty’s the Queen’s great great great great grandmother

It made Downton Abbey look like Dingly Dell by comparison.

Particularly the story concerns her marriage to Andrew Robinson Stoney, whose image hangs in the Bowes Museum in Barney – though not, since there isn’t one, in the rogues’ gallery.

“He doesn’t just look evil,” writes McKie, “he looks as though he revels in being evil.”

The column has, of course, researched the validity of this claim – or, to be precise, despatched the lady of the house to the Bowes since there’s also a frock exhibition of some sort taking place.

Sharon doesn’t wholly agree about Stoney’s evident malevolence. “He looks a bit like Peter Sellers,” she insists.

MARY ELEANOR BOWES, herself unlikely to be an imminent candidate for canonisation, was just 11 on the death of her father, George Bowes, and became a very rich young lady. Among the properties she inherited was the 24-bedroom Streatlam Castle with its 20 farms and 1,400 acres, the Gibside estate near Gateshead and Glamis Castle in Scotland.

Though there were many suitors, said equally to be smitten by her beauty and her breasts, she was married on her 18th birthday to Lord Strathmore, said to be of Glamis and Hetton-le-Hole (though not necessarily in that order.) They had five children before his untimely death.

Mary Eleanor continued to have numerous lovers and numerous abortions – effected, noted her diaphanous diaries, by “drinking a black inky liquid". While pregnant by Newcastle solicitor George Grey she married Robinson, 12 years her senior, euphemistically described as an adventurer and more realistically as an ogre.

There is nothing, however, to support David McKie’s belief that when penury familiarly returned, the gentleman at least gave to the language the expression “stony broke”.

The dictionaries that “stone broke” is American, similar to stone cold or, for that matter, stone dead. None was indebted to Andrew Robinson Stoney.

THE Morning Post had published a series of salacious articles, very probably written by Robinson himself, on the wanton ways of m’lady of Streatlam.

Stoney challenged the editor to a duel, thought to be a put-up job, and when seemingly mortally wounded proposed marriage to Mary Eleanor. The ceremony took place at St James' church in Piccadilly, the groom carried down the aisle on a stretcher. Thereafter he made a miraculous recovery.

Grey had drawn up a sort of pre-nuptial agreement which ensured that her children would solely benefit should anything happen to Mary Eleanor. Enraged, Stoney Bowes (as the he was) fought in vain to challenge it. It was among his many depredations.

Mary, for much of the time effectively imprisoned, became a forlorn, emaciated, half-starved figure. Finally her husband arranged for her to be kidnapped at gunpoint while she shopped in Oxford Street, London. The countess was forcibly returned to Streatlam, the scandal spreading through England like an 18th Century Sun exclusive. Stoney is said to have tried to blow his wife’s brains out, murder thwarted when the pistol jammed.

In one of the coldest spells of the century’s coldest year, Stoney set off across country with his wretched and ill-nourished wife. At Neasham, near Darlington, they were intercepted – some accounts say by Christopher Smith, a constable, others by Gabriel Thornton, a ploughman – and Mary freed.

Stoney was sentenced to three years, the sentence spent in rooms outside the prison in the company of his mistress. “Details of his prison life are too disgusting for profitable perusal,” says McKie, squeamishly.

Mary died aged 51 and is buried – accounts suggest in the dress in which she had been married to the Earl of Strathmore – at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Stoney, who in 1780 was High Sheriff of Durham and from 1780-84 MP for Newcastle, lasted another ten years.

The story has been the subject of several books, was the basis of William Thackeray’s novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon which in turn was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick. Stoney died in 1810, described by Jesse Foot, his biographer, as “cowardly, insidious, hypocritical, tyrannical, mean, violent, selfish, deceitful, jealous, revengeful, inhuman and savage and without a single countervailing quality.”

“As the picture at Barnard Castle suggests,” adds McKie, “he was not a very nice man.”

THE Bowes Museum was built by John Bowes, Mary Eleanor’s grandson. While the lady of this house studied the art work, the column took itself off through Westwick and Stainton Camp and places in search of Streatlam Castle.

Though Country Life magazine suggested in 1915 that it was architecturally “awkward and unsatisfactory”, the 24 bedrooms were augmented by two oak drawing rooms, the yellow drawing room, the great dining room, the billiard room, the gentlemen’s room and the study. It could almost have been Cluedo.

The parkland is now an equestrian centre. Of Streatlam Castle there is no trace. Partly demolished in 1927, it was finally blown apart in 1959 as part of a Territorial Army training exercise and fell on Stoney ground.

Last laughs

Trevor Shaw had attracted some good audiences in his time but rarely a better house than his last, at Wear Valley crematorium last Monday.

“Trevor (Seth Shildon) Shaw” it said on the running order outside, but the comedian was no double act. Whatever the name to which he answered, Trevor was unique. We’d earlier recorded his passing, aged 75. The funeral offered last laughs.

Sharon Davidson, the humanist officiant, quoted the column – even sought permission – recalled that when Trevor had been landlord of the Sun Inn at Wackerfield, between West Auckland and Staindrop, a bus trip bound for a weekend in Blackpool had dropped in for a livener.

Trevor proved so entertaining they spent a weekend in Wackerfield instead.

David Greener, Chester-le-Street lad and fellow funny man, told of a Saturday night working in Somerset when someone rang from Tow Law Town football club to say that the booked comedian had taken one look at the audience and fled. Could Dave help?

Trevor, who lived in Witton Park, was having a night off and was there within half an hour. “The audience was eating of his hand,” said Davey.

The wake was at Cockton Hill Club in Bishop Auckland where, ten years ago, Trevor had recorded a DVD to mark his 40th anniversary in the business. They gave copies to the mourners, which was very kind, but Trevor would be unforgettable without them.