WEARING the required hats and pearls – and since this isn’t Calendar Girls, other things also – the ladies of Howden-le-Wear Women’s Institute gathered last Monday evening for a slightly premature centenary dinner.

They were not, possibly, the North’s first. That honour, a significant milestone in the region’s social history, is claimed a couple of miles down the road by Witton-le-Wear which on the afternoon of March 14, 1916 became just the 13th WI in the country.

A few hours later Cotherstone, above Barnard Castle, launched the 14th. Though Cotherstone has much else to recommend it, the branch no longer exists.

Properly preoccupied by the hostilities, the following day’s Northern Echo had nothing of the event, though the WI might have approved of an exhibition in Guisborough called “Marmalade for the Fleet".

We also reported a tribunal in Sunderland where a poor chap had pleaded for military exemption on the grounds, among other things, that he was a vegetarian. “There’ll be plenty of carrots in the Army,” observed the clerk, somewhat unsympathetically. Case dismissed.

Witton-le-Wear’s centenary bash will be held on March 2 at the Redworth Hall Hotel – “a bit early, but it’s our institute night,” says branch president Sheila Tock, a great stalwart of the movement.

Howden was registered in April 1916. A century later they still know how to enjoy themselves.

THE first WI was formed at Stoney Creek, Canada, in 1897. Britain’s first opened on September 16, 1915 at Llanfair PG, that long-winded village on Anglesey with station name boards half the length of the platform.

Period photographs show ubiquitous millinery, though pearls are harder to discern. “I think hats and pearls are just things people like to harken back to, I don’t think they were ever a sort of uniform,” says Charlotte Fiander, the national federation’s head of communications.

A little internetting suggests that the ladies are awfully fond of them, nonetheless. “Hats and pearls compulsory, clothes optional,” says an ad for a Women’s Institute in Hong Kong.

By the end of 1916, Britain had 40 WIs. By the end of 1918 there were 199 and a year later 1,405. Now there are around 215,000 members in 6,300 branches.

Witton-le-Wear’s pre-eminence was due to a friendship between Madge Watt, a Canadian who pioneered the movement in Britain, and her fellow countrywoman Mrs HG Stobart who lived with her coal-owning husband in Witton Towers, that interesting old building alongside the A68.

“I expect HG were her husband’s initials,” says Sheila Tock, and she’s right. This was Henry Gervas Stobart who had extensive interests across the Durham coalfield and who later moved to Bedale Hall. His wife – Mrs HG – became the first Witton-le-Wear president, the first Durham County president and a member of the first national executive.

Both Sheila’s grandparents were Witton-le-Wear founder members; her family have been members ever since. “It was just instilled into me as a kid,” she says. “When I passed the test I took over driving duties. March 2 should be a very good night; a hundred years old is quite good going, isn’t it?

HOWDEN-LE-WEAR, who believe that they were the first County Durham institute to be registered, had originally planned a big meeting with a special guest speaker at the Masonic Hall in Crook.

Perhaps because folk heard who the special guest speaker was to be, they changed it to dinner for ten at a restaurant in Shildon with a commemorative salver for every member. With neither indication of the dress code nor requirement to sing for supper, they invited me, anyway.

Numbers falling, they’ve recently been meeting with Helmington Row WI, above Crook. Now they’re to become Howden-le-Wear with Shildon and will meet at St John’s church in Shildon from which several members have joined.

The talk was that the Archbishop of Rwanda, a bit out of his patch, had, without warning, attended morning service the day previously.

More scurrilously, it gave me the chance to recall over the risotto the splendid story of the St John’s curate who slept in for evensong.

They’ll meet on the last Tuesday, beginning on March 29 (7pm) when Bev Wright of Stems in Spennymoor will give a floristry demonstration. All are very welcome. A talk on the joys of journalism will doubtless follow shortly into the second century.

LAST Thursday evening to the opening of a permanent exhibition devoted to Bishop Auckland’s railway history, but with a distinct and positive eye to the future.

The dear old town is reinvigorated; new energy abounds. The catalyst is Jonathan Ruffer, the Stokesley-born philanthropist whose vision enthuses all.

Already the historically-themed Eleven Arches project has 1,500 volunteers, aged literally from two to 86. “The two-year-olds were twins who came dressed as Vikings,” reports Steffa McManners, one of the trustees.

Auckland Castle and its grounds are wonderfully and publicly reborn, the market place undergoes similar transformation. Another Very Exciting Project (about which we are sworn to secrecy) may be announced soon.

The railway exhibition is at the Four Clocks Centre, the former Methodist church in Newgate Street behind which the railways long puffed and chuffed beneath Goliath gantries. Its centrepiece is the Bishop Auckland NUR banner, thought to be one of only three in the world to survive.

“A special but rather fragile old girl,” said Gerald Slack, secretary of the Bishop Auckland Railway Group. “An inspired location,” said Sue Snowdon, Durham’s ubiquitous Lord Lieutenant.

There are glorious, monochrome, photographs such as the better-days station in the snow, of the Friday night pigeon train being loaded, of a lolloppy dog – apparently called Bish – toasting in front of the signal box fire.

Old men, former station workers, eyed them wistfully. “That was the fish house, that’s the bait cabin, that’s where the trains went to Spennymoor...”

There was also a Stockton and Darlington Railway poster for Christmas Day 1856, on which festive occasion the first train left Barnard Castle at 6.30am, Frosterley at 7.20am and Guisborough at eight o’clock. Santa specials hadn’t been dreamed up; times change, but are remembered yet.

IN another room at the Four Clocks, railway film reeled, including footage of the 1946 disaster near Ferryhill.

The surprising thing was that the otherwise omniscient Bob McManners, Ferryhill lad and retired Bishop Auckland GP, swore never to have heard of it.

It was January 5. Ten killed and 18 seriously injured when a London to Edinburgh express ploughed into a goods train which had split and been wrecked when the back half caught up with the front.

Among those who escaped was Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary, travelling back to his South Shields constituency – but Bob’s probably looked all that up already.

...AND finally, Martin Birtle – who watches telly with subtitles – reports that the weather forecast talked the other night of the easterly wind pulling in showers. At the bottom of the screen it was translated as “pulling in shallots”. Brings tears to your eyes, says Martin.