A century of scouting on Cockerton Green

It is dated April 10, 1915. It notes that Mr JB Lishman was asked to take charge, “and he kindly agreed to do so”, and that lots were drawn to allocate the 12 young men present in to two patrols, Tiger and Swift.

One hundred years later, the 8th Darlington are celebrating with an anniversary open day next Saturday. It will culminate with the mayor opening their newly created history room in what was once the snug of an ancient inn, overlooking Cockerton Green.

Scouts from all over Darlington, including Cockerton Green, in 1918 by the Tees at Blackwell

John Benson Lishman, a hardware shopkeeper on Bondgate, was the troop’s founder. He was inspired by his Methodism – that first meeting was in the Methodist Sunday School on the south side of the Green – and by a desire to do something for the boys whose fathers were away at war.

He was also a keen musician, playing the bass flute, and the last line of the inaugural minutes records: “It was also arranged than a band (fife) in connection with the troop should be formed.”

Before band practice could begin in earnest, the scouts decided to hold a camp. After their meeting on June 10 – at which they agreed to order two pairs of semaphore flags – 12 of them piled into “the Bean”, an open charabanc vehicle, and drive off to see if farmer Thomas Best would allow them to pitch camp on his land at Burtee Gate. However, a quarter-of-a-mile outside Cockerton, the Bean broke down, and they had to complete the three mile journey on foot.

For years afterwards, the 8th Darlington didn’t rely on motorised vehicles, preferring instead to walk to camp, hauling all their camping accoutrements in their trek cart (see below, in 1944).

They held their first camp at Burtree later that June: three days of cooking and signalling, plus a hike to Gainford, only to be caught in a thunderstorm on their return leg. Around their camp fire, they practised their music, singing the hits of the day: It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, which the first Irish troops sang as they marched into France in August 1914, and Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile, which was a big musichall hit that summer.

The band must have been fairly rudimentary – they’d bought a couple of mouth organs and a big bass drum to accompany Mr Lishman’s bass flute – but they must have sounded alright. To celebrate their first anniversary in April 1916, they trekked to Gainford and played on the green. The logbook records that the villagers were so appreciative that they bought them chocolate.

The logbook also marks a sad moment at the end of 1917 when their 45-year-old founder scoutmaster was called up. “After a small presentation of a pocket watch, we watched as JB Lishman turned off the lights for the last time, lumps in our throats as we saw him depart – would he return, or would death snatch him, as it had thousands before?”

He returned. And he led the 8th to a remarkable triumph.

The best band in the world: the 8th Darlington band which won the 1920 competition

At midnight, on August 1, 1920, the band gathered on Bank Top Station and played Move On on the platform before boarding the London train. At King’s Cross, they loaded their instruments into their trek cart and walked four miles to kip in a stables in the Fulham Road. Next day, they marched to Kensington Olympia, a huge glass palace, in which 8,000 scouts from 34 countries had gathered for the first World Jamboree.

Over the next few days, in front of a variety of judges, they played four hornpipes, a ditty of their own composition, and the test piece, Move On, until the judges awarded them first place in the Drums and Fifes section. The boys from Cockerton were the best band in the world.

“It was a fantastic achievement when one considers that there were representatives from all parts of the British Empire, the US and nearly all European countries,” says the troop’s history.

Some of the instruments and music, including the holder which was attached to the bass drum, is in the 8th’s museum which will be formally opened next Saturday.

The scouts on the ferry from Dover to Ostend in 1920

To celebrate, the scouts caught the ferry to Ostend, and hiked into Belgium. At Ypres, “they stood and surveyed the devastated, barren, uninhabited countryside about them”. The book notes: “One could not help feeling proud of the noble men who had endured this – and worse – for our sake and the cause of right. They felt they were in the midst of a wilderness. Not even a bird sang – the sinister quietness struck them with awe.”

The 8th’s books record how over the next few decades, the troop grew, endured another world war in which five of its members were killed, and then re-established itself once more until March 1950 when their den in Aston Terrace was threatened – they still met in the Methodist church hall but they kept all their accoutrements in an unoccupied cottage nearby.

Scout stalwart: Frank "Skip" Beadle

The landlord wanted the cottage back, so Scout Master Frank “Skip” Beadle – who had joined as a 12-year-old in 1939 and lived and breathed the 8th until he died in 2002 – approached the owner of an empty property on the north side of the green. This was No 80, one half of the Newton Kyloe Inn, and the 8th moved in.

They have never out. In 1957, they raised several hundred pounds in seven days and were able to buy both No 80 and its other half, No 82, and they spent the next decade constructing a large hall – now known as the Frank Beadle Hall – on the inn garden. It opened on January 6, 1967, and has stood the troop in good stead ever since.

Thousands of young people have passed through its hands since – the 100th currently has more than 100 beavers, cubs, scouts, seniors and rovers – who have all written their own stories in the troop’s annals. All those stories and memories will be shared at Saturday’s open day in the 8th’s ancient inn.

THE scouts’ ancient inn (above) is a remarkable building held together by cow hair. It is constructed of rough cobbles that have been jammed together and then plastered over, with bristles from a cow’s back mixed into the plaster to hold it altogether.

The walls are 21 inches wide at ground floor level, 14 inches wide on the first floor and just six inches wide at roof-level.

The first definite date in its story is 1657 when its landlord, Cuthbert Marshall, died. In his will, he left his “stepe lede” – a vat for steeping malt in – to his son, William. This suggests that brewing, and drinking, was established on the north side of Cockerton Green from early in the 17th Century.

It was called the Newton Kyloe Inn because, on May 11, 1799, Hylton “High Price” Middleton slaughtered his enormous ox, the Newton Kyloe, down the road at Archdeacon Newton.

A kyloe is a breed of Scottish cattle. Archdeacon Newton is the scene of a lost medieval village, which once had its own chapel, and which is now the home of Acorn Diary.

The five-year-old Newton Kyloe was one of the first of the beef mountains that the Darlington area became famed for producing as the first scientific advances in feeding and breeding bore fruit. After the Newton Kyloe came the Ketton Ox, the Blackwell (or Durham) Ox, and, most famously and enormously of all, Comet.

The Newton Kyloe Inn on Cockerton Green in the 1890s

The inn would have been the first stopping off point for travellers from Staindrop, until in 1795 when it was by-passed by a new turnpike road. Trade was hit, and it was divided into a pub and a house. Still, though, there were good times, in the windowseat in the snug parlour which overlooks the green and is now the scouts’ museum, and in the early Victorian dance hall out the back, which is now the scouts’ “small hall”.

The last landlord was Robert Sleightholme, who also had a traction engine and a steam threshing machine. Magistrates removed his licence because he had failed to improve the dilapidated pub privy at the rear, and because he was in the habit of parking his traction engine at the front of the pub, causing a traffic hazard.

The inn became cottages until the 8th Darlington turned it into their den in the 1950s.

8th Darlington (Cockerton Green) Scout Group 100th Anniversary Open Day 
11am-3pm, Saturday, April 11, 2015

The group’s headquarters on Cockerton Green will be open for everyone to look round this historic building. At 1pm, the mayor of Darlington will formally open the new museum room, and there will be an anniversary cake. Light refreshments will be served throughout the day, and the senior troop will be doing some backwoods cooking over a real fire in the rear garden.