Public address

IN a century when a man could be sentenced to death for stealing clothing from a farmhouse, or given six weeks’ hard labour for making off with a duck, the punishment handed to James Auld in 1821 would likely have made the front page of The Sun.

Auld was the hapless driver of the London Mail coach which on June 16, 1821 overturned at Sunderland Bridge, three miles south of Durham. Two passengers were killed.

Charged with manslaughter, Auld received nine months. You got more for being drunk in charge of donkey.

The story’s retold in a fascinating new book on the history of pubs in the Spennymoor and Ferryhill areas, written by Bob Hall, a retired detective superintendent in Durham Constabulary – a recent column may inadvertently have demoted him; apologies – and still a man who gives the impression of not missing very much.

A lot of his book, of course, has the ineluctable whiff of the barmaid’s apron. That it also bears passing resemblance to a 19th century Police Chronicle may be no more avoidable.

There was a lot of crime about, and the old polliss has still done a canny bit detective work.

Though the Tudhoe Colliery clothes thief is thought to have had his sentence commuted – it was 1839, not notably the age of enlightenment – no such leniency awaited two of the men who, in November 1872, beat to death James Wain outside his shop in Duncombe Street, Spennymoor.

The inquest was at the Queen’s Head in Villiers Street – it’s where such things were held in those days – the trial within a month, execution four weeks later.

The book records everything from the publican who lost his licence for gambling – you’d have bet on it – to the numerous fires which seemed, even then, to occur.

Insurance jobs? The former top detective clings to the rules of evidence.

“I couldn’t possibly say.”

BOB was a Darlington lad, stationed at Spennymoor early in his career and has returned there, retired in 1997 after leading the investigation into 24 homicides (as he calls them) in the previous five years.

All but one were solved. The other one, he says, was found not guilty.

He also remembers someone in his early-days digs telling him that Spennymoor had had more pubs per 1,000 people than anywhere else in England.

“It’s easy to say but difficult to prove,” he suggests – but mind, there were an awful lot, beyond argument.

Mid-19th century Catherine Street, near the town centre, had 33 back-to-back houses and five licensed premises – the Shamrock, the Edinburgh Castle and three simply described as beer houses.

Many fed the all-hours thirst of men from the Weardale Iron and Coal Company’s works in the town, pubs with names like the Steam Mill, the Puddlers and the Foundry, as if to make them feel at home.

The villages were equally well served. Hett, little Hett, had three pubs; Sunderland Bridge, a cockstride away, had four.

A steel works manager called Dodds bought and closed the Moulders Arms in the late 19th century, a probably vain attempt to dissuade his men from the Demon. He helped build the first public library, too.

The book also lists many licensees down the years – the redoubtable and fondly remembered Edna Round at the Voltigeur, Joe and Pearl Raine at the Pit Laddie, the unforgettable Nat Card at the Crown, Harry Cox at the Marquis of Granby in Byers Green.

Things were different then. They were the days when licensees were respected and central figures in the community, not five-minute phantoms who flit before the paint’s dry above the door.

“You certainly don’t see all the jewellery and finery that you used to behind the bar,” says Bob. “A lot of them are going to be in difficulty again, that’s quite obvious.”

He also recalls, early in his own career, when landlords acted as moneylenders.

“Customers would borrow money, refund it on pay day and then borrow it again the day afterwards.

“If the landlord wouldn’t oblige, they’d take their custom elsewhere.”

The book took four years to write and research, interrupted by a call from the parish priest – “Well, you can’t say no” – asking him to help on a history of St Charles’ RC church in Tudhoe. He’s now helping with a centenary history of Ferryhill Town Band.

Public domain, he hopes it will be a social history, too – and has sleuthed some splendid photographs more graphically to tell the story.

There’s a lovely picture of a wellfilled charabanc outside the Voltigeur, probably taking the lads – then as now – for a day’s drinking at Durham Big Meeting. The column’s old Spennymoor friend Paul Hodgson cannot clearly be identified, but doubtless is on there somewhere.

Inevitably we meet in a pub, back to the Black Horse. The book’s going pretty well, Bob supposes. It should top up a lot of stockings this Christmas.

■ Public Houses of Spennymoor & Neighbourhood by Bob Hall (£10, available from The Studio, Spennymoor High Street, Taylor’s newsagency, Cheapside, Harker’s newsagency, Market Street, Ferryhill and Your Store, Kirk Merrington).

One over the eight….nine things you might never have known about pubs in the Spennymoor and Ferryhill areas

■ In 1886, Spennymoor lad James Smith successfully contested the British draughts championship – 35 games over seven days – at the Lord Raglan in Spennymoor High Street.

Crowds were large, the prize money £50.

■ Mr Taafe of the Market Hotel in Cheapside asked magistrates in 1872 for permission to open an hour earlier – at 5am – in order to quench the thirst of night shift ironworkers.

He was tired of being knocked up out of bed, he said. The bench refused.

■ Following a pigeon shoot at his premises, the landlord of the Railway Tavern at Todhills – near Willington – was brought before the 1871 Brewster Sessions “as all low life for miles around were attracted”. He was warned to clip their wings.

■ On the main north-south turnpike, the Eden Arms at Rushyford kept a string of 100 horses to maintain services in the 1830s.

■ The Railway Hotel in Clyde Terrace, Spennymoor, bore the brunt of election day riots on February 11, 1874. Police repeatedly baton charged the crowd, with many other pubs damaged and closed for safety reasons.

■ Nearly 3,000 spectators gathered at the Thinford Inn in 1871 to watch a game of fives played for a £30 stake between Matthew Taylor of Trimdon and John Dennison of Wingate. It was held in the enclosed ball alley at the back.

■ The stream which flows beneath Spennymoor town centre was known as the River Jordan; part of Low Spennymoor was nicknamed Jerusalem.

■ A thief who in 1884 stole a duck from the landlord of the Colliery Inn in George Street, Spennymoor was sentenced to six weeks hard labour.

■ In the 1880s, the Hutchinson family bought the Gypsy Inn in Ferryhill Station, the Plough at Bradbury and the Red Lion at Mordon – all within a mile or so – and closed the lot with a covenant that they should never again sell alcohol.

Rock of ages

LAST week’s column foresaw a visit to the Brownie Hut in Barnard Castle – a meeting place not to be confused with the nearby Scout headquarters but which apparently often is – for a festive kneesup and for the launch of a book on the ancient craft of dry stone walling.

Immediately there was a problem. The caterers were late with the lunch. Though it proved well worth waiting for, the pin-the-nose-on-the-Santa competition thus continued rather longer than had been anticipated.

The slim volume – partly sponsored by Northern Rock, as all dry stone walling probably should be – has been produced by members of Craftworks, a slightly itinerant charity which provides creative options – they make things, in other words – for those with special needs.

They work closely with Green Explorers, which helps youngsters from schools across south Durham. Craftworks began in North Yorkshire, moved across the Tees because there are more grants in County Durham, would still attract a lot more support if they were in the inner-city.

“No one seems to think that rural areas have problems,” said Christine Rushmere, the chairman.

Craftworks folk had also embroidered a series of attractive “dry stone walling” panels which will soon go on tour.

The book looks at walls and walling, at stiles with style and at the Teesdale dialect. There are smouts and crippleholes, thruffs and hearting, hogg holes and lunkies. Weardale dry stone waller Trevor Dixon recalls how he learned the trade from his father.

“He told me there’s a place for every stone and a stone for every place.”

Particularly, however, we were taken by an ode to a Scottish dry stone waller called Davie the Dyker, written in 1874 by John McTaggart of Borgue.

And was there ever heard his like

For bigging o’ a strang stone dyke?

He wasnae fractious, dip, na fyke

For meikle doon.

He sought for through bans that wad rike

And capes wad croon

Two for the price of one, Jim McTaggart – one of the Echo’s men in Barney – was earning Brownie points at the other side of the hut, though whether kin to the poet it is impossible to say.

Whatever twaddle may be printed elsewhere, Jim will continue assiduously to patrol the Teesdale beat – and the John North column to put head round the door, as well.

FURTHER to the note a couple of weeks back on Wilf Proudfoot, the Crook lad who became Conservative MP for Cleveland and a junior minister, the Stokesley Stockbroker recalls that one of his secretaries at the Commons was a bonny blonde called Christine.

“A few years later she married and became just a little more famous as Christine Hamilton, wife of the dreadful MP.”

SOMEWHAT presumptuously, The Guardian on Saturdays has a section called “Things we learned this week”. Among them last weekend was that Butch Cassidy’s mum was a Geordie, though Echo readers may never have known in the first place since we didn’t carry the story.

Everyone else seems to have done, based on research by Cassidy addict Mike Bell, himself formerly from Newcastle.

“I’ve been from Utah to Argentina looking for information on Butch. All that time his mother had been living around the corner,” he said.

Cassidy, it will be recalled, became leader of the Hole in the Wall Gang – otherwise the Wild Bunch – who committed armed robberies in several states. He is thought to have died in 1908, in a gunfight in Bolivia.

Sundance, his sidekick, clearly had Geordie connections, too. Why else would he be known as Our Kid.

Another string to Vera’s bow

THE Ancient and Honourable Company of Fellmongers in Richmond – very ancient and no doubt equally honourable – is to have its first lady Master in getting on 400 years.

She is our old friend Vera Selby, daughter of a former manager of the Freeman, Hardy and Willis shoe shop in Richmond, twice women’s world snooker champion and something of a time-served iconoclast.

Once, Vera recalls, she and playing partner Ray Lennox reached the semi-final of the North-East snooker championship at Shiney Row workmen’s club only for her to be told it was men only.

“They had to send for a committee man. Ray told them that if they didn’t let me in there wouldn’t be a semi-final,” she says.

Now 78, long in Newcastle, the magnificent Vera still plays for two men’s teams each week – one in Gateshead, one in Ashington – still holds high office and still referees.

She became one of the Fellmongers’ first female members several years ago. “I’m absolutely chuffed to be in line for Master,” she says. “I love Richmond to bits and it’s a huge honour.”

She is also an accomplished poet and after dinner speaker, frequently combining the two. “She addresses a hall as she might a ball, coolly and with aplomb,” the column once observed.

The Fellmongers’ Guild is still involved in charitable work, in making grants to apprentices and in gatherings with craft guilds throughout the land. Vera’s installation as Master, including a procession through the old market town, will be on St George’s Day 2009.