STILL famous for his celebrated weekly column on rural life, which ran in this newspaper for more than 50 years, up to his death in 1976, the legendary Yorkshire writer Maj John Fairfax-Blakeborough had little time for conventional news values.

"What country people like to read about," he declared, "are triple-yoked eggs and cream-coloured moles." Though he wasn't around to enjoy it - or, better, contribute to it - the monthly Cleveland Repertory and Stokesley Advertiser was his kind of journal.

Item, May 1843: "An old hen, belonging to Mr T Maynard of Ingleby Greenhow, has for several years changed her colour as the years changed, being one year white, another black, another yellow. At present she is a beautiful speckled grey."

Item, March 1843: "A few days ago, as some sawyers at Whitby were cutting up the trunk of a tree, they discovered in the centre a wren's nest, with eggs quite perfect, encircled by about two feet of solid wood ..."

Item, September 1843: "A remarkable apricot tree, in front of the house of Mr Robert Waller, the King's Head Inn, at Seamer, has, this present scarce year, produced the enormous quantity of forty-nine dozen and a half."

These long-lost trifles, and much else furthering the Repertory's stated mission to present the "News, Literary and Scientific, Political, Agricultural and Commercial" of its chosen area gain new currency through the endeavour of Stokesley resident Beryl Turner. For the Stokesley Local History Study Group, of which she is a member, she has compiled extracts from the short-lived (1843-5) but fascinating Repertory into a book.

While most strongly focused on Stokesley, it draws material from throughout historic Cleveland, broadly Northallerton to Whitby, caught on the cusp of great change.

Middlesbrough, for example, had made little mark in the vast hinterland it now dominates. Reporting a fatal gig accident to a "Middlesborough sic butcher", killed while travelling home from Stocktonen, the Repertory felt it necessary to locate the fledgling town - "near the village of Acklam".

In the same year, 1843, the Repertory noted the resumption of a summer coach, the aptly-named Cleveland, from Leeds to "the fashionable watering place of Redcar". Its journey took eight hours. Two years later, its demise was foreshadowed when the Repertory reported, "on the best authority, that the long talked-of Railway from Middlesborough to the favourite bathing place of Redcar, will now certainly be formed."

Over the brief life of the Repertory, change came even to cricket - or at least the way it was reported. Early editions give the score in notches, which later yield to runs. Doubtless because of poor pitches totals rarely exceeded 50. So games, played before big crowds, which betted heavily, were usually of two innings.

Challenges between individuals were not uncommon, and in one, played at York for a £5 prize, Stokesley's David Halton beat the local player with scores of 15 and 6 against 3 and 6. Said by the Repertory to have been "very numerous" and "gratified by the result", the spectators probably attended as much for the betting as the cricket. Their money was on Halton.

Then, as now, Bonfire Night brought the usual racket. In 1843 the Repertory noted: "We never recollect such a noise of pistols and crackers." But the countryside was often loud with shotguns. One report tells how a gamekeeper of "Sir William Foulis, Bart" (Ingleby Greenhow) one day "shot 15 woodcocks - and on the following day shot 6 out of the 14 he saw."

At neighbouring Kildale, another shooting party happened to "fall in with nine woodcocks migrating to their native clime". Eight never made it beyond Kildale, and it is impossible not to wonder how much richer our birdlife might be today but for such wholesale slaughter.

In his poem, An Ancient to Ancients, Thomas Hardy wrote: "In dance, the polka hit our wish." The Repertory announced classes in this "fashionable art" - day sessions 15s 75p per quarter, evening 12s, plus a further 1s 6d 12p entrance." Probably only the well-to-do polka'd.

Hypnotism, then termed mesmerism, was another fad, subject of numerous lectures. Temperance was also in full swing, with a George Jackson, of Hutton Rudby, invoking St Paul to prove that "Christians must be Teetotallers". But alas, a Stokesley lecture by the Peace Society, which urged the "grand principle" that "kindness and love are more calculated to produce like feelings in others than are hatred and revenge", drew only a "small congregation". Nevertheless, committees were formed at Stokesley, Ayton, Gisbrough sic, Stockton and Middlesbrough, by now, 1845, spelt without its superfluous "o".

Among several grisly deaths reported was one in which a Nunthorpe farmworker impaled himself on his pitchfork. But people rarely "died". This victim's life "expired". With others it "became extinct". A chemist who collapsed "breathed his last", and before a doctor could reach a woman struck by a heart attack, "the vital spark had fled".

But in other fields, there were no euphemisms. In February 1844, the Repertory reported: "A young lady, supposed to be insane, lately went from Darlington to Edinburgh under somewhat mysterious circumstances. She put up at the Black Lion Hotel and ordered male attire from a respectable tradesman, of course without giving any intimation that it was for her own use. It is believed she has escaped from some lunatic asylum ..."

Ploughing matches, balls, fires (a frequent cause of death) the early Stokesley Show (then called the Cleveland Agricultural Show), hirings, "police intelligence" (reports of vandalism and sheep stealing among other offences), farm sales, church and chapel events - the world of early Victorian Cleveland is all here.

The harsh life for many is implicit in reports like one of a woman and her new-born child found lying, alive, on Ugthorpe Moor in January 1845. The woman had given birth while crossing alone after losing her job in service. Her child died within days.

Another report tells how a quantity of sea coal washed up at Coatham "proved a godsend to the poor".

The Repertory's readers would be glad to turn to the reports of Mr Maynard's chameleon hen and Seamer's productive apricot tree.

* The Cleveland Repertory and Stokesley Advertiser, transcribed by Beryl Turner, softback A4, £8.50 from Stokesley Bookshop, or £9.80 by post from 19 The Avenue, Stokesley, North Yorkshire, TS9 5ET. Also available from the same address: Stokesley Directories 1793-1901, listing more than 4,000 names, occupations and addresses culled from 19 directories - on disc £5, or as a 215-page book, £10.50. Cheques payable to Stokesley Local History Study Group