IN December 1984, a Bishop Auckland funeral director undertook a job he will never forget. “It wasn’t very nice at all,” he says. “It was unbelievable that there was so much left.”

His experiences of a highly unusual exhumation complete the story of Windlestone Hall that has been running in Memories for several weeks.

The hall, near Rushyford, was built in the 1830s by the Eden family, and for much of the 19th Century, it was the seat of Sir William Eden, the 6th Baronet of West Auckland, and his wife, Lady Elfrida. Of their ten children, six died very young – three didn’t even make it through their first day.

Originally, the children were buried in St Helen’s Auckland, where the family had worshipped for 400 years. But in 1868, grief-stricken Sir William decided to move them closer to hand and built a large mausoleum at Windlestone. When he died in 1873, he was also placed in there.

Sir William’s successor was his son, Sir William, the 7th Baronet of West Auckland. He expressed a wish “to be buried beneath the stars” and so, when he passed away in 1915, he was placed in a brick-lined grave outside the mausoleum. His wife, Lady Sybil, died in 1945 and was buried near him in an earth grave.

The Eden family’s association with Windlestone came to an end in the Second World War when the hall was used as a Prisoner of War camp. Post-war, it was acquired by Durham County Council and in 1954, as Memories 223 told, the mausoleum was attacked by vandals who smashed their way into the coffin of Robert Eden, who had been nine when he died in 1856.

Soon after, as the hall became a residential school for children with chronic health problems, the mausoleum was razed to the ground and sealed.

But still there were ten human bodies in the area. In 1984, Sir John Eden, the 9th Baronet of West Auckland, , who had just finished his 30-year spell as Conservative MP for Bournemouth West, approached Bishop Auckland Co-operative Funeral Services and asked the Co-op to move his relatives back to St Helen’s.

Our funeral director, who now lives in Hunwick, was given the unenviable task, and on December 6, 1984, he went to the hall with a builder and broke into the remains of the mausoleum that were below ground level.

“The size of the interior surprised me,” he remembers. “It was 10ft high and 20ft wide in the shape of a cross. To the right, were six coffins, one of which had been vandalised some years earlier, and at the rear was the coffin of a day-old baby, James Edgerton Eden, who had died in 1904. It had been placed on a small table, and on the left was the coffin of Sir William, identifiable from the nameplate which I transferred to the new casket.

“All of the outer shells were completely decayed but the lead linings, with the exception of the vandalised coffin, were intact.”

He had to transfer the remains into fresh caskets. As well as Sir William, there was his first son, George, who died in infancy, and Robert, whom the 1950s vandals targeted. Then there were his three girls: Caroline, who was born and died on February 29, 1860, and the twins, Blanche (born and died on August 10, 1865) and Rose (born and died on August 11, 1865).

The following day, the funeral director returned to find the two Edens buried outside. “There was a headstone, but they weren’t buried near it,” he says. “An old lady walked past and she said ‘you won’t find them there’ – she had worked for them all her life and maybe she didn’t want us to find them because she was so dedicated to them.”

They were eventually located and removed to St Helen’s church where, on December 10, there was a short service of re-interment, attended by members of the Eden family, including the widow of the former Prime Minister, Sir Anthony.

“It was an experience,” the funeral director tells Memories, “but I wouldn’t want to do it again.”

WHO, asked Memories 223, was Arnold Cockburn of Cockerton? A 1964 photograph showed his name emblazoned on the side of a coach in Darlington.

Many people gave us clues – thank-you to them all. For instance, former Darlington mayor Barrie Lamb said: “He had the Westbridge Garage on Newton Lane, behind which was a row of stables where my father kept his horse and cart before he had is van.”

The best sources, though, are Arnold’s family, and we are in touch with his widow, Evelyn, through his niece, Joyce Siddle.

He was born in Darlington in 1930, worked as a mechanic at John Neasham’s garage and married Evelyn who was a receptionist. After his national service in Singapore, he established his own repair business beside an old farmhouse off Cockerton Green – only a few yards from the headquarters of the scouts whose 100th anniversary featured in Memories 224.

While the family lived in the house, his garage was in shed and he handled cars on an open air ramp.

However, the business thrived, allowing him to demolish the house and build up-to-date service areas and a showroom from which, in 1959, he was one of the first to sell the Mini.

Opposite was a cobbler’s shop which he bought and replaced with another showroom called EME Motors – his wife’s full name was Emily Mary Evelyn. EME Motors was the first BMW dealership in the North-East and then he sold two Russian makes, Moskvitch and Volga.

“He won a competition for selling the most Moskvitch cars and his prize was a collection of records by a classic Russian opera singer and a bottle of vodka,” says Joyce. “The dealer who came second received a case of champagne.”

She is too polite to say how well Arnold took this news.

“The presentation was made at EME Motors and those present drank vodka from coffee cups and then, in true Russian tradition, smashed them against the wall,” she says.

In later life, Arnold became a lecturer in motor vehicle technology at Hartlepool College and he died in Seaford in 2003. EME Motors is now the site of the Just Learning Nursery although much of Arnold’s repair garage remains as a car valeting business.

THERE has also been loads of response to last week’s Bishop Auckland archive, as next week’s Memories will show. One of the pictures was taken in 1962 and showed 17th Century cottages in the Market Place where Auckland Castle’s welcome tower may soon be built. In front of the cottages was a strange-looking vehicle.

George Armatage wrote: “The three wheeler on the right is a Messerschmitt. A colleague owned one, and it was very basic, three forward gears and no reverse, so to turn around you had to lift it by the back end and spin it manually.

“It was a two seater tandem arrangement, very noisy and not very comfortable.”

It seems too good to be true but Messerchmitt, the German aircraft manufacturer, did indeed produce a three-wheeled bubblecar called the Kabinenroller (or “cabinscooter”) between 1955 and 1964.

Even more intriguingly, Arthur Denton of Ferryhill left a message on the Memories answermachine saying he had once Messerchmitt three-wheeler, but unfortunately he didn’t leave his number. We’d love to hear from Arthur again.

FINALLY, back to the sad murder in Darlington’s Park Street in 1966 which appeared in Memories 223 and 225 – the murderer, we believe, had mental health issues and so the case never came to trial.

Last week, people remembered that he was known locally as “the Moon Man”, because he only came out at night, although David Race adds: “To us youngsters he was known as ‘The Glamour Boy’, although few of us had seen him and knew of him by reputation only. We challenged each other with a dare to walk – not run – down the length of the Park Street back lane after dark knowing that there was the threat of The Glamour Boy getting the walker.”