Our Meryl’s a Durham lass at heart (From The Northern Echo)

Our Meryl’s a Durham lass at heart

11:02am Wednesday 15th February 2012 in News

HOLLYWOOD megastar Meryl Streep may think she is a Lincolnshire lass, but her true ancestral home could be a rundown hotel in rural County Durham, it emerged yesterday.

The US-born Iron Lady actress stunned Sunday night’s Baftas by attributing her success at playing Lincolnshireborn former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to previously unknown East Midlands roots.

“Half of me is Streep and the other half is Wilkinson from Lincolnshire so I come by it honestly, this part,” Streep said.

However, it seems she is actually a native North-Easterner; her heritage forever in Harperley.

Trace Streep’s family tree back to her eighth greatgrandfather and you find Lawrence Wilkinson, who was born at Harperley Hall, near Stanley.

A captain in the Royalist army during the Civil War, Wilkinson was captured by Parliamentarians during a battle in Newcastle.

His lands were sequestered and sold, but he was allowed, with his wife, Susannah, and their son, Samuel, to leave the country for the New World.

Capt Wilkinson was one of the first Englishmen to settle in America, his name appearing on the civil constitution of the first settlers in Rhode Island.

Harperley House is believed to be the-now Harperley Country House Hotel, near Stanley, which closed in December 2010, and was put up for sale for £450,000.

Yesterday, Alan Wright, the hotel’s former landlord and now caretaker, who lives in a flat above the bar, said: “I’d welcome Meryl here. I’d be her manager as well.”

The venue has been a workingmen’s club, a pub, a council-run hotel locally dubbed The Ratepayers’ Arms and even a zoo.

It has an 80-seat lounge, a 38- seat restaurant, a 30-cover bar, a function room and seven bedrooms and comes with nearly four acres or land, including Tanfield Lea nature reserve.

It was recently visited by ghosthunters, who believe the old hall to be haunted.

Ivor Stolliday, chairman of tourism group Visit County Durham, said: “It’s fantastic news to hear that Meryl Streep’s ancestors are from Durham, joining the ranks of the many talented people to hail from our stunning county.

“We would welcome her back at any time, so she can rediscover her Durham roots.”