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| COLOURFUL: St Charles's church in Tudhoe is festooned with floral arrangements to celebrate the parish's 150th anniversary |
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Tudhoe celebrates St Charles's 150th anninversary with over 50 floral displays.
One of them recalls the day the town was bombed
THE Germans, it's said, were
aiming for Manchester when
they managed on Christmas
Eve 1944 to drop a Doodlebug
on Tudhoe. Apologists suggest
that the flying bomb's real target
was Newcastle, but that wouldn't have
been a very good shot, either.
Tudhoe is outside Spennymoor, County
Durham, St Tuda thought to have
been a seventh century Bishop of
Northumbria who fell victim to the
plague.
Agnes Tuddowe was a 15th century
prioress of Neasham Abbey, near Darlington,
notwithstanding the potential
handicap of her illegitimate birth. Since
only the most censorious could have supposed
it poor Agnes's fault, the bishop issued
a "super defecta natalium" and
that made things right side of the
broomstick again.
The V-1, at any rate, fell on Tudhoe
cricket field just after 6am, thought to
have been fired from a Heinkel over the
North Sea. The pavilion was destroyed,
the vicarage badly damaged, more than
1,000 windows broken. Eleven were injured;
none, mercifully, killed.
In Middlesbrough, an Observer Corps
member - son of Tudhoe's vicar - had
spotted the buzz bomb overhead. "That
one's aimed at our place," he said, never
imagining how fearfully prophetic the
joke would be.
Highly censored, The Northern Echo
of December 27 reported merely that a
flying bomb had landed in a field in the
north of England, and that boys from
the orphanage had cleared up the mess.
"There were a lot of ruined Christmas
presents and turkeys full of glass, but
there was a team spirit," village historian
Tony Coia once recalled. "We were
winning at the time, we just got on with
it."
The day they Doodlebugged Tudhoe
was recalled last weekend, Jean Hyslop's
floral representation one of 50-odd displays
in a quite wonderful flower festival
to mark the 150th anniversary of the
parish of St Charles, Tudhoe, which
serves the entire Spennymoor area. The
church itself, costing £8,000, opened in
1870.
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| REMEMBRANCE: Wyn Faill in front of the Doodlebug arrangement |
| Buy this photo |
There were displays to acknowledge
the Salvin family, founders and benefactors,
to salute the Queen's coronation,
to recall the Pope's visit to York in 1982.
What probably not even those ingenious
ladies and gentlemen could quite
capture was the moment when the
Tudhoe contingent caught a first
glimpse of the Popemobile, nor what
their feelings were when they discovered
that its occupant was not, in fact, His Holiness
but Mr Jimmy Savile (as then he
was) in a white tracksuit.
Several displays were supported by
churches of other denominations. Another
depicted the three-storey St Mary's
diocesan orphanage, right down to
heads on pillows and players on the adjoining
football field.
Run by the Sisters of Charity of St
Vincent de Paul, the orphanage closed
in 1963. "Without exception (former residents)
speak with fondness of the old
place," said Tony Coia's 1983 parish history,
though those at Tudhoe Academy
- which preceded it - may have had more
painful memories.
Charles Waterton, to become a
renowned naturalist, explorer and author
- his home at Witton Park is said to
have been the first formal bird sanctuary
- was a pupil in the 1790s.
"Literature had scarcely any effect on
me, though it was duly administered in
large doses with a very scientific hand,"
he once wrote, "but I made vast proficiency
in the art of finding bird nests."
Those in charge clearly felt that nests
should be left strictly to the birds. Young
Waterton was frequently birched for his
troubles.
WE'D last attended St Charles's
just three years ago, when the
parish priest was the hugely
popular - and no less charismatic - Father
Dermot Burke. It was the day of the
consecration of the new Pope.
"It seems a little surprising that the
energetic Fr Burke hadn't been asked to
spare a few hours a week to be Pope as
well," the column observed.
"If the latterly enthroned Cardinal
Ratzinger were God's Rottweiler, as unkindly
has been supposed, then Fr Burke
may be God's golden labrador."
Fr Burke is now semi-retired to his
birthplace in Donegal, Ballysomethingorother.
His replacement, every bit as
engaging and every bit as Irish, is Father
Harry O'Reilly, formerly at Darlington
and South Shields.
Fr O'Reilly offers cake and coffee beforehand.
Fr Burke, back for the celebration,
admits that the last column didn't
do him any harm at all. "If I'd been
on the transfer market, I'd have gone for
millions," he says.
Ascension Day Mass is celebrated by
87-year-old Father Vincent Mullaly, retired
to nearby Middlestone Moor after
27 years as parish priest at Lanchester.
St Charles's is nearly full.
"It's lovely to come into church and
see the love and care with which it has
been decorated," he says, and so it is.
Even when considering the lilies of
the field, who toil not neither do they
spin, it would be hard to imagine something
as florally glorious as this.
Peggy Clark, one of the main organisers,
is in Blackpool - "dancing," they say,
and probably the light fantastic - Mary
Wilcockson, another leader, has been in
Tudhoe all her life, baptised, confirmed
and married at St Charles's.
Mary's mother had come to Tudhoe
Orphanage when just four, both her parents
killed in the Hartlepool Bombardment.
Her mother lost an arm. Mary
taught at St Charles' school.
"We knew a flower festival would be
possible but this just wonderful, beyond
my wildest dreams," she says. "In a way
if just reflects this church - lovely atmosphere,
lovely people."
Afterwards, the hospitable Fr O'Reilly
again puts the kettle on, joined by Fr
Burke. "I told you that new Pope was a
good 'un," he says.
Fr O'Reilly insists that it's his parishioners
who do all the work. "They give
me a pretty easy time, really. They're
very proud of what they've done this
weekend and quite rightly, too."
Many stop behind simply to admire all
the displays. Things seem to be going
like a.well, going awfully well, anyway.
9:52am Saturday 10th May 2008
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