Playing family fortunes

THE Surtees were one of south Durham’s finest families. They were brave in battle, rich in fortune, big in building and regular in scandal.

Crosier and Jane Surtees of Redworth Hall

This week, Redworth Hall – their 17th Century mansion – is commemorating the 270th anniversary of the scandalous affair by which the family came to own it.

The Surtees story starts with a Norman called Siward who came over from France with William the Conqueror. After the conquering, William asked Siward to guard the crossing of the Tees at Dinsdale – a beautifully remote place between Neasham and Middleton St George which had once been on a major Roman road – and gave him the land around as a reward.

Siward’s descendants adopted the surname Sur Tees – “on Tees” in French – as it described where they lived. They also adopted the leaping salmon as their emblem – you can see it carved on a grand chimney in Redworth Hall – because Dinsdale was renowned for its fishpools.

The Surtees Arms, with the family coat of arms over the door, stood in the middle of Redworth village. It is now a private house

Over the next 600 years, the Surtees flourished, rooting branches of their family in various parts of County Durham. In 1693, Edward Surtees of Mainsforth made an excellent match by marrying Jane Crosier, whose family owned a lot of land in the Redworth area, between Heighington and Shildon, where a medieval manor house stood.

Jane, though, was the youngest of five daughters, so Robert didn’t acquire much land when he acquired her hand.

Still, their marriage was happy.

Their first son Robert was born the following year.

By 1744, Robert was aged 50 and unmarried. Suddenly, to his parents’ surprise, he announced his intention to take a bride. The parental surprise turned to shock when they learned the intended’s identity: she was Dorothy Lambton of Hardwick, near Sedgefield, who was wealthy, but who was only 22 years old.

The Surtees family coat of arms

Horrified by the 28-year age gap, Edward offered his son £2,000 if he would marry any other woman.

Robert refused, and 13 days later he wed the young lady of his dreams. In revenge, Edward disinherited him and all of his heirs. Yet Robert had the last word.

Using his new wife’s fortune, he bought the medieval property at Redworth that his mother’s family had owned and so he became lord of the manor over his father.

Continuing to make use of his wife’s money, Robert destroyed the medieval house and began building the hall, which is at the heart of today’s hotel.

However, perhaps because of the age gap, Robert and Dorothy only had one daughter – Jane – which meant that in time the Surtees name would no longer be in control of Redworth.

Yet Robert had a plan. In 1769, he encouraged Jane, aged only 17, to marry Crosier Surtees, her cousin – his brother’s son – who was 30.

Thus Robert ensured his line would remain at the hall.

The gatehouse to Redworth Hall on the road from Heighington to Shildon. This picture was taken in September 1936

But Crosier Surtees was a “mean and grasping man who had a brief and undistinguished career on the Durham militia”. He treated Jane cruelly, and the marriage was loveless – although it produced 11 children.

Two ghosts are said to haunt Redworth, possibly from this era.

One is of a child who is crying – some say in anguish, others say in joy. This may be Jane and Crosier’s mentally ill child who Crosier apparently chained to a fireplace.

The other is a scullery maid who threw herself down the stairs when she discovered she was pregnant – the suggestion is that Crosier was the father.

In 1800, after 31 years of marriage, Jane seems to have kicked Crosier out.

She spent the rest of her days with a clergyman while he went to live with another of his lovers, a farm girl, at Pennington Rake in the west of Hamsterley Forest.

One night in 1803, Crosier was returning home on horseback, frightfully drunk, after banqueting with Lord Barnard in Raby Castle. His horse stumbled as it tried to cross Linburn Beck (which rises near Hamsterley Forest and flows into the Wear near Witton Castle) and he tumbled into the water. He was found next morning frozen to death.

Redworth was inherited by his son, Robert, who passed it on to his son, Captain Henry Edward. He served in the 10th Royal Hussars, lived much of his time in Hertfordshire where he was the MP, but also spent lots of money turning Redworth into a mock-Jacobean baronial retreat, with grand staircases and a banqueting hall.

Shackleton Beacon Hill has on old windmill on it, plus County Durham’s best preserved hill fort

When Captain Henry died in 1895, the hall was inherited by his two sons, Major Henry Siward Balliol Surtees and Major Robert Lambton Surtees. When they died in the early 1950s, the hall was sold to pay their outstanding tax bill. So after five generations, the hall passed from the Surtees’ hands.

The new owner was Durham County Council, and it became a boarding school, first for delicate boys and then for “maladjusted children”.

In 1987, the school was converted into a 17-bedroom hotel, which has now grown, and which is now celebrating 270 years since Robert first bought it to spite his father.

PERHAPS the grandest guest to have stayed at Redworth Hall was His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Yurievsky, the grandson of the Russian tsar, Alexander II, who was murdered in 1881.

The prince fled the Russian Revolution of 1918, studied at Cambridge University and then in 1924, through a connection to Major Henry Siward Surtees, came to stay at Redworth. He played hockey for the village team, but gained a reputation for being penniless. Indeed, at one point he was declared bankrupt and took an £8-a-week job as a storeman at Head Wrightson’s in Thornaby.

His fortunes turned around in the late 1950s when he married a Swiss baroness and moved to her Alpine villa, where he died in 1988.

 THE highest point on the Redworth estate is a tree-covered hill called Shackleton Beacon. The trees conceal the best example of an Iron Age hill fort in County Durham.

The Iron Age was the period between 800BC and 43AD, and whoever lived on the hill was expecting trouble. They dug three concentric ramparts and ditches around the contours of the hill, which made their home practically impregnable from three directions. However, they may have been vulnerable to attack from the east.

Captain Henry Edward Surtees (1819-1895), who inherited Redworth Hall in 1863

In 1908, a 3lb flint was found in the hillfort. “It had evidently been the clubhead of an ancient British warrior, as the base has been roughly dressed to fix into a cleft stick where it would have been bound by a leather thong,” said one who saw it. “It would have been a powerful weapon as a skull cracker.”

Today, in the middle of the fort is the remains of an old windmill which Crosier Surtees converted into a belvedere – a romantic folly with grand views – in the late 18th Century. Unfortunately, while opening it up to his guests, Crosier did much damage to the ancient earthworks.

WHEN Major Robert Lambton Surtees died in 1952 and the hall was sold, a short stretch of Stockton and Darlington Railway tracks that had been kicking about the estate were presented to Darlington’s South Park – you can still see them by the play area.

The oldest part of Redworth Hall was built in 1744. Today it is a plush hotel

They purport to be original tracks from 1825, but they are not of the “fish belly” design of those early days. It is guessed that they are several decades later and that they came from the Brusselton Incline, which is only a couple of miles from Redworth.