Of cabbages and kings all sorts of things like sofas, fireplaces, rubies, tittybottles and why Chesterfield is in Darlington

Sunderland certainly was a source of inspiration, and Carroll regularly visited his Wilcox cousins who lived at Whitburn. He is also believed to have called on Sir Hedworth Williamson, the North Durham MP whose family had owned Whitburn Hall for a couple of centuries. Sir Hedworth was married to the Honourable Elizabeth Liddell whose cousin was the Dean of Christ Church College in Oxford, where Carroll was a mathematician – the Alice stories were composed for the dean’s daughter, Alice Liddell.

Eric Lambert has been in touch. He says: “My father worked at Whitburn Hall for Sir Hedworth and in the 1960s, when the hall was being demolished my father’s knowledge was called upon to enable the Italian chimneypiece to be removed and placed in Bowes Museum.

“Before the Second World War, my father took me to Sunderland museum and in the entrance hall was a stuffed walrus which my father told me was Carroll’s inspiration for the Walrus and the Carpenter.”

The Walrus and the Carpenter poem – which is set on a wide sandy beach like Whitburn’s – appears in Carroll’s 1871 follow-up, Through the Looking Glass. There has been speculation that Sunderland museum’s walrus was the inspiration, it is now known that its walrus did not go on show until after the poem had been written.

However, it is believed that there was a stuffed walrus in Southwick rectory in Sunderland, where Carroll also visited as his sister, Mary, had married the rector.

And some people say that the carpenter aspect of the poem was inspired when Carroll met a ship’s carpenter. The head carpenter in a shipyard is said to have worn very distinctive headgear, as a sign of his rank – is this true?

THE Whitburn Hall chimneypiece – a fireplace with a mantelpiece – is currently on display in the Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, in the British Decorative Arts gallery.

It was designed for Chesterfield House in Mayfair, London, which was built by Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, between 1747 and 1752. Chesterfield was a writer, wit, statesman, governor of Ireland and Lord of the Bedchamber of the Prince of Wales.

Of the quotations attributed to him, you may yourself have used: "I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves."

CHIMNEYPIECE: From Chesterfield House to Whitburn Hall to the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle

Although, unlike Chesterfield, you probably will never have said: "Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous and the expense damnable."

It is believed that the chesterfield sofa – a low, deep, buttoned piece of furniture with its back and arms of equal height – is named after this Lord Chesterfield. He ordered a local craftsman to make him a sofa in which a gentleman might be able to comfortably sit with an upright back without creasing any of his clothes.

STRANGE CREATURE: Crawling in the marble of Lord Chesterfield's chimneypiece

Perhaps Lord Chesterfield sat in a chesterfield admiring his chimneypiece. It is made of English grey and white veined marble, in the Rococo style.

Chesterfield House was demolished in 1934 and the chimneypiece acquired by the Williamson family of Whitburn Hall.

But Whitburn Hall itself fell derelict in 1960, and the famous chimneypiece was presented to the Bowes in 1968.

SPOTTED NOT SWATTED: A fly on the marble mantlepiece

Whitburn Hall was demolished in 1980 – but its chimneypiece lives on, and is worth inspecting closely. Although it looks classically imposing, it has a smile on its face: carved into it is a fly, a caterpillar and a strange little creature – perhaps it even inspired Lewis Carroll?

LET’S digress a little further, in the hope of explaining one of life’s little mysteries. In 2000, there was a degree of disquiet in Darlington when a large, attractive Edwardian house was demolished and replaced by a block of flats.

It was called Chesterfield and it was on Stanhope Road.

NOW GONE: Chesterfield, on Darlington's Stanhope Road, was built in 1914 and shortly after this picture was taken in 2000

It was built in 1914 as a doctors’ surgery: the medical men had their consulting rooms on the ground floor and lived above. One of the first to practise there was Dr J Donald Sinclair, who donated the Alice in Wonderland mural which was on last week’s Memories front cover to Darlington in 1957.

The last doctor in charge of a practice in Chesterfield was Dr John Kerss. In 1959, he became the first person in Darlington to own a Mini Minor. It cost him £375 and crowds gathered at Chesterfield to see him cram his 17½ stone frame into the dinky motor.

When Dr Kerss retired in 1980, the remaining doctors in his practice moved to a purpose-built surgery in Denmark Street, and Chesterfield became the home of a firm of architects until it was demolished.

Stanhope Road was named in the 1870s as it was built on land bought from Harry Powlett, the 4th Duke of Cleveland – his wife was Lady Catherine Stanhope.

No one has ever explained why Darlington’s Chesterfield was called Chesterfield – it couldn’t be because in 1914, the medical men building their grand surgery on Stanhope Road knew about Stanhope’s grand Chesterfield House in the poshest part of London?

MEMORIES 257 told of Thomas Watson, the poetically-inclined auctioneer who founded the Darlington auction house which still bears his name 175 years later.

In 1844, he had some shawls coming under the hammer, and advertised them with a ditty:

In WOOLLEN SHAWLS warm, you may glide free from harm,

And keep away asthma and phthisic,

Then come on next Friday, I’ll fit you all tidy,

And you’ll need neither doctor nor physick.

Phthisic, we said, meant tuberculosis, and physick meant physician.

Councillor Wally Mellors of Middridge rang to tell of his childhood studies of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which a doctor is called to treat Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking. The doctor, though, says that his medicine can only treat physical illness – not Lady Macbeth’s conscience, which is sorely troubled by the murder of King Duncan.

In rage at the pointlessness of medicine, Macbeth explodes: “Throw physick to the dogs, I’ll have none of it.”

So Thomas Watson’s woolly shawls would prevent you from needing medicine.

MEMORIES 256 and 257 visited Tittybottle Park, initially in Redcar, but then all over – there are Tittybottle Parks in Bishop Auckland, Masham and Richmond, and there used to be Tittybottle Parks in Guisborough, Loftus, Normanby and Otley.

In some places – like Bishop Auckland and Masham – Tittybottle Park is the official park name; in others, it is the local name – part of Richmond’s Friary Gardens was nicknamed Tittybottle Park.

These parks seem to date from the early years of the 20th Century when nannies took babies in prams to the park to feed them from either a bottle or a breast while they chatted to other nannies who were similarly engaged.

Megan Hutchinson emails with details of another local Tittybottle Park.

“There is a Tittybottle Park in Eaglescliffe, at the junction of Yarm Road and Victoria Road,” she says. “It was used by local nannies up till the 1940s and is more formally known as Victoria Park. It now has a war memorial with Victorian style seating and is used by local people who enjoy the quiet surroundings.”

Any other Tittybottle Parks we should be aware of? And we’d also like some confirmation of the rumour that there was once a Tittybottle School in West Auckland and a Tittybottle Bank in Shildon?

CAMERA MAN: Jack Armstrong with his car on the A66 near Bowes

IN Memories 252, we asked about the car that Jack Armstrong used as he amassed his collection of 10,000 railway-related photographs which now form the basis of the Armstrong Railway Photograph Trust.

All of our respondents agreed that it was an Austin 7. “It had a 747cc side valve engine which produced a meagre 13bhp,” said Geoff Kelly, and Bryan Folkes added: “I remember my uncle having one – it was the first car I travelled in as a lad.”

Phil Hunt said: “The Austin 7 was the UK's equivalent of the Model T Ford, bringing mass-market motoring. It was in production from 1923 to 1939, and 290,000 were produced – there were 15 saloon body versions plus two cabriolets sold as "Pearl" and "New Pearl", seven sports cars, one coupe and 11 vans over the 16 years.”

JACK'S CAR: An Austin 7 Ruby – actually, before anyone starts, it is a Mark 2 New Ruby, not a Mark 1 Ruby like Jack's car. As everyone knows, you can tell the difference by looking at the shape of the corners of the side windows

So out of all those types of saloons, which was Jack’s? Alan Bleasby said: “It looks like an Austin 7 Ruby saloon from the 1930s – same as my own first car, reg EHN 511.”

John Biggs said: “It’s an Austin 7 Ruby, which was made from 1935 to 1939. The price new was £120, and this one looks to be in new condition.”

John L Lambard; “It is a 1935-36 Austin 7 Ruby saloon. I learned to drive ours – reg no AUP 45 – when I was 14 and passed my test with it when I was 17. My uncle in Barnard Castle had one too, reg BGU 125 – why do we remember these things?”

Stephen Bradford-Best was visiting Darlington from Hitchin in Hertfordshire, but still found plenty of interest in Memories. He said: “It is a Mark 1 model introduced in July 1934, which had thin metal frames around the windows of the side doors; the Mark 2, introduced in July 1936, had pressed steel doors incorporating the window frame like a modern car. Jack Armstrong’s car is likely, therefore, to date from 1934 to 1936. The registration number, BRA 338, was issued by Derbyshire County Council.”