MR and Mrs Rockliffe were staying at Rockliffe Hall in Hurworth last week in the hope that they might find a family connection.

The couple, from London, became intrigued by the hotel, near Darlington, after spotting that its name matched their own.

"You get a lot of different spellings of Rockliffe – with two cs or no e or no k – but this is exactly the right spelling, so we decided to stay," said Brian Rockliffe, an overseas charity worker who lives with his wife, Freda, in Kingston-upon-Thames. "It would be wonderful to find out that it is part of the family history."

But Chris Lloyd, The Northern Echo's deputy editor who has written a book about the history of Rockliffe and the Hurworth area, was on hand to tell them that the hotel was built by the Backhouse family of bankers and takes its name from a cliff beside the River Tees. It is a "raw cliff" because, in times past, the soil continuously tumbled down it so no plants could get a foothold.

"That's disappointing, but there never was any money in the family – all the Rockliffes were maritime industry workers in Sunderland," said Mr Rockliffe, a keen Sunderland supporter.

In fact, his grandfather was a ship's plater called Wycliffe Zerubabel Whitcliff Rockliffe, whose father's involvement in the Baptist chapel at Southwick, on the north bank of the Wear, caused him to give his son three extraordinary religious name.

"But I think they called him Tom," said Mrs Rockliffe.

BLOB Chris Lloyd's book, The Road to Rockliffe, is available for £12.50 from The Northern Echo's offices in Priestgate, Darlington, or from Waterstone's in the Cornmill Centre.