A church built for tourists

Now let’s stray a little north-east from Stillington, following an old road that once ran through to Wynyard Village, but which now peters out at the Castle Eden Walkway.

Just off this old road, shielded from view by unforgiving overgrowth, is a ruined church which is one of only a handful of Teesside’s Grade I listed buildings.

It was built by Hugh de Puiset, who was Bishop of Durham between 1153 and 1195. He dedicated to St Thomas a Becket, in what must be the first attempt by anyone to boost the tourist industry in the North-East.

Or so the story says...

Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his own cathedral on December 29, 1170, by four knights, apparently on the orders of King Henry II. "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" the king reputedly said, and the knights decided to do the ridding.

However, within the next two years, 100,000 people flocked to Canterbury to pay their respects at Becket’s blood-stained high altar, and in 1173 when he was canonised by the Pope, 150,000 people made the pilgrimage to Rome to pray for him.

The public were so in love with their martyr that Henry II felt forced to humble himself before Becket’s tomb and pay penance for the terrible deed.

All of this rather concerned Bishop Puiset who saw the Becket cult in Kent cornering the lucrative pilgrim trade – a trade that brought many paying customers to sacred places in County Durham, principally St Cuthbert’s tomb in Puiset’s great cathedral.

So the Bishop acquired some stone, blood-splattered chippings from the altar at Canterbury where Becket had fallen and he built them into a new roadside church at Grindon. Now tourists who were tempted to go to the Becket themepark had an attraction competing for their attention in Durham.

It seems to have worked, for within a couple of decades affluent pilgrims to Grindon had left enough donations to built a chantry in the church’s south wall. Over the following centuries, the church continued to grow, and by the mid 18th Century it was comfortably panelled with large private pews for the local landowning families to worship in.

There never seems to have been a village near the church, and so as the belief in religious cults faded, the church’s numbers dwindled.

In the 1840s, a new coach road (now the A177) was built between Stockton and Durham which encouraged the construction of a new church at Thorpe Thewles. It was more convenient for the local population, and the Londonderry family in Wynyard Hall chipped in because it meant they could then discourage the use of the old road past St Thomas’ church which ran across their land.

With no congregation of its own and no passing trade, St Thomas’ was doomed. Already dilapidated, it closed in 1849, and in the 165 years since has slowly fallen down. Since 1996 it has been in private hands and there are no footpaths, only brambles, to it.

READERS may be able to help with the history of another tumbledown and intriguing roadside listed building: Little Burdon Farm between Haughton-le-Skerne and Sadberge, to the east of Darlington.

The A66 dual carriageway whizzes past it at headheight, and it is accessed by an underpass, so quiet and unused that someone was able to dump a twin tub in it without anyone noticing.

The farm is an 18th Century Grade II listed building, but what really caught Memories’ eye was the firemark screwed between the windows on the upper floor. As regular readers will know, firemarks were an early way of proving that your property was insured – vital so that a private fire brigade knew it was going to be paid if your house caught fire.

Most firemarks in the Echo’s area here are from the Sun Insurance Company, but this one appears to be from the Globe company, which operated from 1803-50. In fact, it is probably an early mark as it appears to have the insurance policy number stamped upon it.

Who can tell us more of Little Burdon’s past – or, for that matter, its future?