IT'S getting on 15 years since the Little 'Un, as then he almost was, last lunched with us in the brewery country around Masham, in North Yorkshire. He was barely two at the time, innocently persuaded to try some futuristic orange cake that was up to its neck in Cointreau, and in trouble. He snored gently in the baby seat, all the way home and for an hour or two thereafter.

The hangover long since having subsided, we returned to Mashamshire - as traditionalists like to call it - on Sunday lunchtime, this time to Swinton Park, the home of the Cunliffe-Lister family.

Some call it Swinton Castle, though the battlements, says one of the brochures, are "entirely fanciful". It was begun in 1695 by Sir Abstrupus Danby - "memorably but inaccurately christened by a befuddled parson" - enlarged and embroidered over the centuries and in 1882 bought by Sir Samuel Cunliffe-Lister, who'd made his money in textiles and owned Manningham Mills in Bradford, reckoned Europe's largest factory.

Lister's threads, the Boss reckons, were followed throughout the world.

It's still a family home, having played host - the brochure, penultimately - to "parties of legendary style and grandeur".

Even Neville Chamberlain, a Conservative but not notably a party animal, was moved to remark that he'd spent many happy holidays at Swinton.

The Earl of Swinton and his wife, Lady Masham, live nearby. Mark and Felicity Cunliffe-Lister remain in the Big House, recently converted into a hotel. Felicity, it says, joined Lady Masham to supervise the decor whilst Mark, sensible chap, busied himself in the beer cellar.

The result, and not just in the catacombs, is stupendous - a mansion that's still so greatly a stately home from home that, as usual after Sunday lunch, we fell asleep over the coffee.

Firstly, and to the Little 'Un's unadorned chagrin, we'd taken a stroll around the lakes and through the 200 acres of rhododendron-resplendent parkland which surround the new hotel.

In the ornate lounge, or drawing room, or whatever, we ordered drinks - they cannily keep both Theakston's and Black Sheep, real ale rivals down in the village - scattered the Sunday papers and browsed through Days of Yore, Susan Cunliffe-Lister's neatly titled history of Mashamshire. Yore's the old name of the nearby River Ure.

The book even has a photograph of Reggie Maudling and Edward Heath at Swinton Park. Ted's smiling; it's a very old photograph.

Susan Cunliffe-Lister is probably Lady Masham, but it's all a bit confusing. Willie Whitelaw married into the family, too, though it wasn't at Swinton, but in Teesdale, that famously he copped for a rear gunner's buckshot.

The wide main corridor leads to the dining room, called Samuel's - even the apostrophe is perfectly positioned - whilst off it a sign indicates the spa, the private cinema and the boot room, perhaps with the ghost of Bill Shankly.

It's pretty expensive, of course. Rooms begin at £95, suites rise to £275, but at £14.50 for three-course Sunday lunch with coffee, it offers not just top class cooking, but a real bargain.

Samuel's is magnificent, the high ceiling elegantly gold leafed, the walls hung with portraits of the eponymous Samuel, the tables decorated with lilies in extraordinary, three feet-tall vases.

(The column, incorrigibly, was moved to a soliloquy from St Matthew's gospel. "Consider the lilies of the field" is to be the reading at the state funeral, when the coffin will enter to the theme from Last of the Summer Wine and the handful of mourners will sing Thine Be The Glory and be glad, it is to be hoped, that they bothered coming.)

The Boss was particularly taken with the curtains. She has a thing about curtains. It was tempting to suggest she pull herself together.

Starters included roast tomato soup with pesto oil, smoked salmon with citrus beurre blanc - a great idea - and a herb salad, a vibrantly-light goats' cheese croustade and a ham hock terrine with pickled orange sauce.

Service is by a young team, elegantly clad and properly trained. It would be easy to be too formal or, likewise, too familiar. This brigade pitches it perfectly, and deserves to be recognised for it.

The Little 'Un had the roast beef, the Boss the grilled salmon, we the "corn-fed chicken" with Dauphinoise potatoes and a fragrant Madeira jus. The chicken was very tasty, though it is impossible not to wonder what, if top-of-the-range birds are corn fed, the other poor critturs have for breakfast.

Half way through all this, the music suddenly began - a sort of triumphal chorus, Handel or someone similar. It was as if sundry Cunliffe-Listers had just won the National Lottery, or the 3.30 at Ripon, and wanted the world to know.

There was a selection of home-made ice creams - closer to sorbets, but let's not quibble - an assiette of cheeses, a summer pudding and a crme br-le which the Little 'Un sniffed as assiduously as might a Metropolitan Police bloodhound before declaring it alcohol-free and safe, therefore, to proceed. Like everything else, it was greatly enjoyed. We retired back to the drawing room and to Country Life, reflecting that this was probably a perfect example of it. Highly civilised, very highly recommended.

* Swinton Park, Masham, near Ripon (01765) 680900. Rooms from £95, activities from fishing to falconry, kite flying to model boat racing, Sunday lunch £14.50; thoughtfully adapted for the disabled.

MORTON Tinmouth, a hamlet of maybe 20 good folk, is roughly in the centre of a Bermuda triangle drawn between Darlington, Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle, but effectively in the middle of nowhere.

We'd written of it in 1973, with a team picture of the entire population. "Morton Tinmouth," the John North column observed at the time, "could be a proprietary make of denture, a Scottish football hooligan or a member of a harmonica gang."

Last Wednesday, in the North Briton at Aycliffe Village, we bumped into a chap who'd been on the picture but had left soon afterwards for the big city - that is to say, Newton Aycliffe.

Morton Tinmouth, he said, had changed a bit since then.

The North Brit has changed, too. Long the fabled fiefdom of Allan Edgar - former polliss, wicket keeper, wag and raconteur - it was closed for a year until recent refurbishment. Keg beer, canned music, kids.

They were also between chefs, lunchtime options reduced to fish and chips or fish and chips. Henry Ford would have approved. We ordered the fish and chips; and gave them full marks for trying.

DARLINGTON'S CAMRA branch has "joined villagers and other customers" in an attempt to save the Raby Hunt at Summerhouse (Eating Owt, May 29) from delicensing. "It's a valued amenity and should be placed on the market as a going concern," says Darlington Drinker, the branch newsletter. Renowned for its Marston's bitter, the Raby Hunt was the Darlington area pub of the year in 1985 and 1991.

AN e-mail from John Lowes, whom once we met during a meeting of our FA Cup final escape committee. John's been a member of a similar escape committee for 12 years, meetings every year except when Newcastle United are in the final and, therefore, pretty regularly. This year the Jollyboys Social Club went to Chesterfield for the day - eight real ale pubs and a skewiff spire.

He's responding, at any rate, to the note in last week's column that pub landlord Gary Soakell hopes to make the Turbinia the first Newton Aycliffe entry in the Good Beer Guide in the town's 50-odd year history.

He can't, says John. The Iron Horse was in the 1990 book - though not, sadly, thereafter.

THE quite splendid Bertha Pallister, who may now be nearer 100 than 90, also writes after last week's column. The Brooklyn Caf near Darlington, she recalls, was run after the war by Bert and Emma Hastings - "we went with them, four of many, to Miss Lambert's School of Dance in the 1950s".

....and finally, the bairns wondered what song we should sing whilst cleaning (as ever) the cooker.

Foam, foam on the range....

Published: Tuesday, June 5, 2001