LAST week we told of Thomas Robinson Ferens, who was born in East Thickley, near Shildon in 1847, and became a multi-millionaire in Hull.

He is one of the North-East’s greatest industrialists, building Reckitt & Colman into a global household name, and many of the buildings that are now at the centre of Hull’s UK City of Culture celebration have either the Ferens name upon them or his money behind them.

We were trying to establish whether there was a connection with Ferens Park in Durham City, and brilliant genealogy by Billy Molloy has found the link.

The Ferens family originates from the Chester-le-Street area. TR Ferens’ grandfather, Robert, came south to start milling at Shildon. His brother, John, had two sons, Robinson and Joseph, who became drapers and settled in Durham City.

In 1857, Robinson Ferens married widow Sarah Love whose late husband had been the son of Joseph Love (1796-1875). Joseph fairly often crops up in Memories, as he was a wealthy miller, shipowner and colliery-owner: his collieries included Willington, Oakenshaw, Sunnybrow and Shincliffe.

You may remember Memories 222 in 2015 when a reader, George Barnett, sent in a picture of a Love brick that he had found. It must have been used in one of his colliery buildings. Love bricks are especially sought after among those who collect colliery bricks.

The Northern Echo: A Love brick

Having married into the Love family, Robinson Ferens became manager of several collieries, and there are bricks with “Ferens & Love” pressed into them. How we would love to see one of these.

Anyhow, Robinson Ferens’ brother, Joseph (1829-1885) married into a Durham family of solicitors. His son, Henry, was a solicitor as was his grandson, Cecil (1899-1975), who gave £500 to Durham City Football Club to buy an orchard in The Sands area which the club converted into a pitch and called Ferens Park. In the 1990s, when the club moved to Belmont, they called the new ground New Ferens Park.

So there, if you’ve followed closely, is the Ferens connection between Hull, Shildon and Durham.

CECIL FERENS had almost as big an impact on Durham City as his nephew had on Hull. Susan Jaleel in Darlington points out that the junior house at Durham School was named after him until 2003; Dr J Hawgood from Durham says that, as Colonel Ferens, he was the commanding officer of the Army Cadet Force, and that Ferens House at Sherburn Hospital, sheltered accommodation, “is another example of his generosity”.

He was legal secretary to the bishop of Durham, solicitor to the Cathedral Chapter, city councillor from 1934 and mayor of the city in 1947-49. He was a wicketkeeper for the city and county cricket clubs, and he died in 1975 at the age of 86.