Manor borne

JOHN LITSTER has been visiting Columbine Hall, a 600-year-old moated manor house near Stowmarket, in Suffolk. “The owners remember you with some affection,” he writes and readers – older readers, anyhow – may particularly recall the lady of the manor.

Leslie Geddes-Brown wrote sparky, spiky columns and fashion pieces in the Echo circa 1970, the Sharon Griffiths of her day (save that Ms Griffiths, similarly blonde, probably makes a better sausage sandwich.) Only Harold Evans, the editor, enjoyed a higher profile.

Hew Stevenson, Leslie’s husband, went from selling the Shields Gazette on the beach – family ancestors had founded the paper in 1849 – to becoming chief executive of Westminster Press, then the Echo’s multi-titled parent company.

“I remember going along the sands shouting that we had the racing results,” says Hew, now 76. “I think that the regular chap must have been off sick, but I worked in every department at the Gazette, including putting new lights in the composing room. I’d still like to find, somewhere in the world, a newspaper still produced on linotype.”

His father, Cmdr Shannon Stevenson, had been the company’s managing director in Darlington, lived in Bolton-on-Swale, near Richmond, and died, quite recently, aged 99. His wife reached 105. “I think I may have a while to go yet,” says Hew.

STILL the Echo library preserves some of LGB’s columns, familiarly fronted with the female icon.

There’s excitement at her move from a terraced flat next to an undertaker’s in Darlington to a cottage with a shared allotment at Great Ouseburn, near York; there’s a trip to London – “why are all the girls so thin?” she asks – a plea that all children should be taught shorthand and gardening, properly to prepare them for life.

Particularly she railed against the destruction of historic buildings, demanding that those who flouted preservation orders should be sent directly to jail.

On the back of every cutting are the day’s television listings – Follyfoot, Opportunity Knocks, The Mind of Mr J G Bender, the Prisoner and For the Love of Ada, starring the “tiresome” Wilfred Pickles and Irene Handl.

Inevitably there’s Corrie, too. “Stan has delusions of grandeur and Bet blows the whistle,” we summarised. Hugh and I had been a little earlier.

Leslie, now 74, was born in Sunderland, spent early years in Whitburn – “it confounds all those who say I’m not from the North-East” – moved to York when her father became a GP there.

She left school at 16, was told by the Yorkshire Evening Press to come back she was 17, spent a year at technical college. “I was doing boring things like accountancy and that’s how I became treasurer of the Darlington branch of the NUJ,” she recalls. “It was a big mistake. I couldn’t add up.”

Head hunted by Harry Evans, she joined the Sunday Times, became arts correspondent and then deputy editor of Country Life and World of Interiors and has written 19 books, mostly about gardens and interior design and mostly, she insists, of the kind which don’t make money.

They bought Columbine Hall – “run down but sound enough underneath” – in 1993, three years before Hew’s retirement. “We’ve had quite a few other houses and, like us, they get older all the time,” says Leslie.

This one came with 29 acres. “After a couple of years the village postmistress said we needed a full-time gardener and that she knew just the person,” Hew recalls. “We were slightly insulted, but she was quite right. The gardener was 16 and she’s been with us ever since.”

Columbine Hall is also a wedding venue. “We love it, but it’s a lot of work,” says Leslie. “A coat of paint seems to last about two days and if you want to clean the windows, you have to get a pontoon. You don’t think of that when you buy a house with a moat.”

We’ve promised her a copy, a successor column. “It’s an awfully long time,” says LGB, “since I had my name in The Northern Echo.”

THE column two weeks back talked of Zaccheus, the short-shrift tax collector who climbed a tree in order better to see Jesus. It prompted a letter, culpably mislaid, from a lady in Crook. In long-gone Sunday School days, she recalled, there was a words-and-actions song about Zaccheus –– “a small man, and a very small man was he” – up in his tree. First time in donkeys’, she’d been singing it, incessantly, all morning. “For that memory,” she added, “many thanks.”

GREY haired but ever-enjoyable, the Age UK men’s breakfast was entertained last week by John Robson, described as mountaineer and adventurer, but fascinating way even beyond those high boundaries.

As ever, it was held at Café Cenno in Durham’s indoor market. The university freshers’ week stirred itself, dreamily, outside. They have much to learn.

John Robson himself completed his first degree at Durham – he has four – became a PE teacher at the Johnston school and then rose high up the county fire brigade ladder. He ran 70 miles a week, could do 150 press-ups, ascended worldwide.

When he was 51, April 2013, he woke and couldn’t get out of bed. Within weeks his weight had dropped from 11 stones to eight, the problem eventually diagnosed as polymyalgia rheumatica – paralysis of the arteries that in 75 per cent of cases affects women over 70.

“Within a few days I’d turned into an old woman,” he said. “They told me I’d never run or walk again.”

It hastened his eventual retirement from the fire service, a departure matured by a going-away present which included 70 bottles of malt whisky. “I do like my whisky,” he said, self-evidently.

Now the illness is under control, though he still rolls rather than climbs out of bed. He’s climbing, running, giving motivational talks, always looking up. Last weekend he was in New York for the run commemorating the 343 firefighters who lost their lives at 9/11.

Since 2004 he has also led Fire and Ice Expeditions, a charity which has raised £120,000 for children’s causes in the North-East and has the Latin motto “invenium vium aut facium”.

Come again? “I’ll find a way or I’ll make a way,” said John.

...AND finally, the report last week that the Bridge Inn at Ramshaw is being rebranded as Big John’s Steak House recalled one of the most memorable opening paragraphs in 50 years of trying to write them.

Ramshaw’s a few miles south-west of Bishop Auckland, the pub many times reinvented. Back in the 1970s, the latest incarnation was marked by an opening night meal for guests only.

It was disastrous, the food almost awful. The reason quickly became obvious. “It wasn’t just the walls at the Bridge Inn which were fresh plastered,” began the John North column, “so was the chef.”

Fresh start, Big John’s is to be wished great good fortune.