RARELY has Memories been more excited than when an email arrived this week with a picture of a Rational Umpire attached to it.

As Memories 268 told, Rational Umpire bicycles were built by Lingford, Gardiner & Company of Bishop Auckland for about 20 years at the start of the 20th Century.

Lingford, Gardiner was an ironfounders that specialised in colliery gear and locomotives, but it diversified into bike-building during the 1890s.

“The firm, which has been for several years official cycle repairers of the ‘first class’ to the Cyclists’ Touring Club, is now arranging workshops and laying down special plant for the manufacture of cycles generally, as well as Gardiner’s Patent Spring Frame Bicycle, a machine admitted to be the most comfortable yet brought to public notice,” says a description of the company written in 1894.

When the plant – the Auckland Cycle Works, in Railway Street – went into production in about 1898, it was decided to call the bicycles “Rational Umpire”, which is a splendid, if rather irrational, name.

Our photograph of a Rational Umpire – or, at least, we hope it is a Rational Umpire – has been sent in by Ron Twigg of Hurworth, and it shows his grandfather, John Twigg, riding the bike in about 1910.

“I remember my father talking about that picture and he said it was a Rational Umpire,” says Ron. “I said ‘what’s one of those?’ as I had never heard of it before.”

All the evidence points to it being a real life Rational Umpire. The Twiggs lived in Salisbury Place, which is just over the road from the Auckland Cycle Works, and John worked as a blacksmith at Wilson’s Forge, which is where the Asda supermarket is today. The forge lasted until 2000, but for several decades was part of the Lingford, Gardiner business.

“My grandfather went all over on that bike,” says Ron, who even got a go on it himself.

“I was quite tall for my age – I was about 5ft 8ins when I was ten – so I was able to get on it and ride up the back lane at Salisbury Place, but they never let me on the road.

“I remember seeing it in the 1960s parked near the coalhouse.”

The bike's handlebar is covered in brilliant paraphernalia – there's a great squeezy horn and a huge acetylene lamp. There don't appear to be any gears, and the tyres look unforgiving. Now we've seen a photo of a Rational Umpire, we'd love someone to come forward to say they had a real RU rusting in their shed…

BEYOND having ridden a Rational Umpire, Ron Twigg’s other claim to fame is that his father, Ken, was a member of the Bishop Auckland 1939 FA Amateur Cup winning team – they beat Willington 3-0 at Roker Park in front of 20,000 supporters. Also in the Bishop side that day was Bob Paisley, who went on to manage Liverpool.

ESCOMB, on the west side of Bishop Auckland, is famed for its church – dating from about 675AD, it is one of the oldest and finest Anglo-Saxon churches in the country.

It is next to the River Wear, at the bottom of what anyone pedalling on a Rational Umpire would testify is a very steep bank.

“They used to get a lot of sand and gravel from the river, which in the old days they got out by horse and cart,” says Derek Graves, who lives in Escomb. “I remember an old villager telling me about the horses pulling the loads up to the top of the bank, and then they would put a tracer harness on the horses which would walk back down by themselves to the farm.”

But before the horses turned for home, they were allowed a drink of water from a metal trough to revive themselves.

Over time, the trough disappeared into the hedgerow, so Derek and a band of Escombians cut the overgrowth back to reveal a splendid Lingford, Gardiner horse trough. They’ve painted it black, picked out the name of the ironfounders in gold, and planted some bulbs in it.

It is a great monument to this overlooked firm.

SO, Lingford, Gardiner & Company was formed in 1861 – the money came from the Lingford family of baking powder manufacturers, and Samuel Gardiner had been an apprentice to Timothy Hackworth in Shildon.

They “are leading makers of locomotives for collieries and ironworks, colliery winding engines and pit-head gear, points and crossings”, said a description written in 1894 and referred to by Tom Hutchinson in his books on Bishop.

The main works were in Railway Street. They were connected to the main railway line by a siding that went under a footbridge, through what is now the Asda supermarket, and over a level crossing in Railway Street into the sheds, which were grandly known as the Auckland Engine Works.

The contraction of the coalfield in the 1920s forced the company into liquidation, although many of its workshops still stand. The railway forge next to it – Wilson’s Forge – carried on until 2000 when the Asda supermarket was built.

WHETHER Lingford, Gardiner had the capacity to build a locomotive from scratch is debatable.

Graham Redfearn, of Bishop Auckland, writes: “They got a reputation for fitting their name-plates to locos which they had handled. It would seem doubtful if they ever built a complete loco as most of their “products” appear to look like someone else’s.” So they repaired another company's work and put their own plate on it.

Graham’s grandfather, Fred Gray, worked at Witton Park slag works before the First World War, where a small loco called Egypt operated. It had been built by John Fowler of Leeds, and was intended for export to the Middle East but ended up at the slagworks instead.

While Lingford, Gardiner repaired it, they sent another loco to replace it. “One day, my grandfather had been told by one of the other men to shunt a railway wagon under a hopper,” says Graham. “He obeyed instructions, and as the loco went under the hopper, the safety valves struck a girder and were knocked off. There was a huge amount of escaping steam and hot water flying about – particularly as my grandfather shouldn’t have been driving the loco, but who got it in the neck for causing the incident I don’t know.”

ALL of this started because the Auckland Railways Group has just opened an exhibition of local railwayana in the Four Clocks Centre on Newgate Street. Pride of place is the banner of the Bishop Auckland branch of the National Union of Railwaymen – one of only three of its kind in the country.

The exhibition, which includes the Lingford, Gardiner story, is open from 10am to 3pm every weekday.

MANY thanks, as ever, to all who have been in touch. There’s gallons of fascinating correspondence from you all that will one day make it in to print, perhaps starting next week with Danby Wiske.