SCOTTISH bank manager Thomas McLachlan liked the lofty position of Carlbury above the raging Tees because it reminded him of his tempestuous homeland.

So in 1875, he commissioned Darlington architect John Ross to build him a Scottish baronial style mansion in which he could sit, high above Piercebridge with views of rolling Yorkshire pastureland to the south, and imagine he was halfway up a midge-infested Scottish mountain.

Some people have strange tastes.

Carlbury Hall still stands, and Mr McLachlan's stone monogram on its chimneypiece still looks down onto motorists using the A67 road from Darlington to Barnard Castle, which is happily reopened after its landslip closure.

The Northern Echo: SCOTTISH-STYLE: Carlbury Hall, seen today from the re-opened A67
CARLBURY HALL: Built by Darlington bank manager Thomas McLachlan in the early 1870s

The Northern Echo: CHURCHY ARCH: What is the ecclesiastical-looking arch in the grounds of Carlbury Hall?
CHURCHY ARCH: What is the ecclesiastical-looking arch in the grounds of Carlbury Hall?

Since Carlbury appeared in Memories 232, Hugh Mortimer has been in touch because he has long been intrigued by something else that peers over the hall wall – what looks to be an ecclesiastical elevation, complete with window.

Mr McLachlan was born in Scotland but joined the National Provincial Bank in London when he was 17 in 1836. By the mid-1840s, he’d been promoted to the Darlington High Row branch of which he became manager in 1848 (it is now NatWest). He and his wife, Jane, lived in the bank with their growing family.

However, over the winter of 1852-53, scarlet fever stole away three of their boys: Donald, six, Lamond, nine, and Kenneth, two. They are buried in Holy Trinty, with a draped urn in the stonework over their grave.

The McLachlans were fairly advanced in years when they moved to their dream baronial home at Carlbury, and sadly, Jane only had three years to enjoy the high altitude views. She died, aged 60, in 1878, and is buried in High Coniscliffe church.

After he retired, Mr McLachlan spent the winters in his house in Bayswater, London, and the summer at Carlbury. He died in 1898 in Kensington, but the train brought him home to be buried next to Jane in High Coniscliffe.

But who can explain the churchy stonework in his back garden? Could it have been pilfered from the Roman fort, or was it brought from some other long lost medieval house? Please let us know if you have a theory.

THE last station-master at Piercebridge was Tom Cooper. From a railway family, his grandfather was station-master further down the branchline.

Tom took over at Barnard Castle in 1945 and died in January 1964, just a few months before he was due to retire and the station to close.

His daughter, Margaret, now lives in Bedale and remembers in the bad winter of 1947, Tom and the Piercebridge signalman were taken up to Stainmore to try to rescue a locomotive stuck in a snowdrift.

At 1,370ft above sea level, Stainmore, between Bowes and Barras stations, was the highest point any railway reached in England, and was notorious for capturing engines over the winter.

“They went up to help clear the line and they got stuck up there for six weeks, and had to stay in the train,” says Margaret.

She also remembers the night that Princess Margaret spent in a Royal train in the siding at Piercebridge in the late 1940s.

The Northern Echo: ROYAL VISITOR: Princess Margaret, about the time she slept in a siding at Piercebridge
ROYAL VISITOR: Princess Margaret, about the time she slept in a siding at Piercebridge

“She was about 18,” says our Margaret. “We got a phone call from Northallerton station which told my father to disinfect the phone because she wanted to ring Buckingham Palace when she got to Piercebridge.

“She was visiting the Red Cross at Scotch Corner the next day, and I have never felt so safe in my life – there were lots of police around all night until she left by car for Middleton Tyas the next day.

“In the morning before she went, we went down to the goods yard and took her some fresh eggs, and she said how lucky we were to live in such a lovely place.”

JEAN TAYLOR, who now lives at Whinney Hill near Stockton, spent the first years of her life at Aske Hall, near Gilling West, where her father was Lord Zetland’s stud groom, but when the stableyard was requisitioned by the army, she went to live with her grandmother in Piercebridge.

She remembers that Carlbury Hall was the home of Major Benjamin Chetwynd Talbot, whom we imagine was related to the Earl of Shrewsbury who has the same surname.

“I was eight and I was so proud when I was given four needles to knit a pair of socks for my father who was serving in the Middle East,” says Jean. “Mrs Taylor’s husband was also out there, and she would visit the school and collect the socks we’d knitted and make sure they got to the right regiment.

“Every other Saturday, Mrs Talbot invited the children of the village for what she called an American tea party, where everyone brought something. Games were organised, and we had a wonderful time.

“Mrs Talbot organised a bus to take us to Darlington to the Court Cinema in Skinnergate so see Bambi. On the bus, we were given a very pretty cloth bag with six sweets inside and we were told not to eat them until we got into the cinema. Most of us had never been to the cinema before, so it was a rare treat.”

When they were at school, the village policeman – one of only three people in Piercebridge to have a phone – would receive an air raid warning and alert everyone by blowing his whistle. The children would grab their gas masks and head to the candlelit shelter in the playground. It was not a pleasant place, so their teacher, Miss Snowden, promised that if they were in there longer than a hour, they would each get a barley sugar stick.

“We never were, because the policeman would blow his whistle to signal all-clear,” says Jean. “At the end of the war, the barley sugar sticks were still there. We were taken by bus to High Force where Miss Snowden gave us each a stick, and we sat there, eating them. It was marvellous – a very special day.”