A tower without an inferno

At the tower’s base is a large, studded, locked door, but the letters on the lintel explain: “Sir Hugh Bell built this tower as part of a water supply to Arncliffe and Rounton, AD 1915.”

And then, coming from the top of the tower, you hear the gentle sound of trickling water, and it all falls into place.

Next weekend, the water tower celebrates its 100th anniversary. Its door will be unlocked to reveal its treasures, and it will be the centrepiece of the village’s open gardens. There will be classic cars, a scarecrow trail, a first look inside a restored Victorian glasshouse, and a big chance to have a nosey around a fascinating, historic place.

The 1915 water tower at Ingleby Arncliffe

Sir Hugh, the Middlesbrough ironmaster, lived with his second wife, Lady Florence, at the Rounton Grange mansion at East Rounton – a couple of miles west of Ingleby Arncliffe, across the A19. Their initials – “H&FB” – can be seen in the artfully laid cobbles in front of the tower.

Sir Hugh was thrice mayor of Middlesbrough, and during his first term of office, he presided over the municipal acquisition of the Stockton and Middlesbrough Water Company. It was renamed the Tees Valley Water Board, and he became its first chairman.

Perhaps this was the inspiration for his water tower.

The story goes that during the First World War, as all of life’s necessities started to run short, Sir Hugh feared that even the water supply might be interrupted.

So he commissioned the renowned Arts and Crafts architect Walter Brierley, known as “the Yorkshire Lutyens” to build the remarkable tower, which would look equally as at home on a Scottish baron’s estate as it does in a Teesside ironmaster’s village.

A natural spring less than a mile away, but about 1,000ft up the Cleveland Hills, is connected by a pipe to the tower. The height of the spring forces the water to the top of the tower, from where it could cascade down to standpipes in the case of an enemy-made emergency.

But it is probably a folly. It seems doubtful that Arncliffe did ever run dry and so the tower was never forced to supply water in anger. Still today, though, it feeds a couple of cattle troughs and is connected to an estate cottage.

And it is an impressive, intriguing adornment of which any village would be proud – especially when the large door swings open to reveal the treasures inside.

The fire engine in the water tower at Ingleby Arncliffe. Picture: Stuart Boulton

The first item to come trundling out, on toe-crushing wheels, is a red, manual fire engine. At the front is a bar, which a couple of burly firemen would have used to pull it through the streets to the scene of a blaze. On the sides are longer bars, which six firemen – three on each side – would then have pumped up and down, sucking up water through a hose from a nearby source and spurting it onto the flames.

Under the engine’s lid are the remains of the instructions, revealing that it was made by Merryweather and Sons of Longacre and Lambeth in London. This gives us as a clue as to the pump’s date: the Merryweathers only had a workshop at Lambeth between 1862 and 1879.

A Paddington Bear-type label hanging from the engine reveals that it once guarded Rounton Grange, the Arts and Crafts mansion built in the 1870s for Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell. On his death, his son, Sir Hugh, inherited the mansion, enlarged it at the start of the 20th Century and then closed it down in the 1920s as an economy measure. During the Second World War, it was used as a Prisoner of War camp and then, when the National Trust couldn’t save it, it was demolished in 1953 – rendering the fire engine homeless.

Sir Hugh Bell, who built the Ingleby Arncliffe water tower. Today's front cover shows Sir Hugh, on the left, aged 82 in 1926, stepping on site during the construction of the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle

The second treasure in the tower is older. It, too, is on grinding wheels, but it moves more stiffly, due to its age. It is a bier – a barrow on which a coffin was drawn on its occupant’s final journey. It, too, must have a local connection, although today it bears nothing heavier than old rolls of firemen’s hose.

Stone work at the entrance to the 1915 water tower at Ingleby Arncliffe

INGLEBY ARNCLIFFE is an ancient place. Its name comes from Old Scandinavian: “Ingleby”, meaning “the settlement of the Englishmen”, and “Arncliffe”, meaning “the cliff of the eagles”.

The Englishmen had a church beneath the eagles’ cliff in AD830. There was probably a manor house next to it, and the pair were surrounded by a protective moat.

More than 1,000 years later, the pair are still together, “snugly embosomed in trees at the foot of the hanging woods which mantle the steep cliff”, according to Arthur Mee in his 1941 guide to North Yorkshire.

The bier in the water tower at Ingleby Arncliffe

Both, though, are unrecognisable, and only about a quarter of the moat still holds water.

The church, which is also open next weekend, was rebuilt in 1821, using much old stone and saving ancient stone knights and glazed windows. On the outside is a curious clock-shaped circle, with “Domus mea domus orationis vocabitur cunctus populis” carved around the outside (“My house will be the home of prayer for everyone”). But there is no clock in the middle, only an ill-coloured piece of stone. Has time flown, or did they never find the time to install a timepiece?

The hall was rebuilt in 1753 by John Carr of York – regular Memories readers will remember Mr Carr as the greatest bridge-builder of his day (Greta, Asygarth, Croft, Yarm and Richmond). They will also remember that when he was away from his home building all the working week, he took with him a large pork pie which, using his compasses, he divided into six equal portions – one for each evening he was away.

Although Mr Carr covered the entrance hall ceiling with a depiction of the Goddess of Plenty raining affluence over Roseberry Topping, the hall owner, Thomas Mauleverer, didn’t want him to complete the project.

Mr Mee wrote: “It is said that Thomas left four rooms unfinished, wishing four generations after him to finish one room each.” Whether they did or not is unrecorded, but when Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell bought the hall in 1895, he still felt that it needed enlarging.

The hall has a huddle of out-buildings in the hollow at the foot of the hills, including a couple of newly-restored Victorian glasshouses, which will be open for the first time next weekend.

The ironwork inside the glasshouses reveal that they were built by William Richardson of Darlington. He was born in Langbaurgh Hall in Great Ayton, and a 15-year-old apprentice architect in Darlington in 1851 when the Crystal Palace in London suddenly sparked the great glasshouse craze. Young Richardson glazed his way to success, and many of the mansions in this area have hothouses, vineries and conservatories which bear his name.

His manufacturing works were off Neasham Road, beside the East Coast Mainline, and from 1952 to 1987 they were advertised by a giant triangular thermometer which could be seen by passengers entering Bank Top Station.

In Arncliffe, after a couple of decades of dereliction, the glasshouses have been restored by local craftsmen Les Sutton-Haigh and Glyn Temple, using great lengths of cedar wood which is ideal for glasshouses due to its water repelling properties.

During the restoration process, they needed somewhere to keep their timber until it was completely dried out – somewhere very tall and narrow. But where in the village could they possibly find such a place?

Of course, the water tower – so although it probably never saved the day in 1915, the tower did come to the rescue in 2015.

With thanks to Ken Jones for his help