Pavilioned in splendour

If not quite a story of coming back from the dead, it marks a remarkable turnaround, nonetheless.

Etherley’s a former pit village a few miles up the road from Bishop Auckland, divided by the locally knowledgeable into Low and High Etherley and seamlessly indivisible from the neighbouring community of Toft Hill.

They’d played cricket since 1850, when club rules forbade smoking during practice and ordained that a player would be fined sixpence for swearing and a shilling for entering the ground by means other than the gate.

In 1960, they won all 24 games in the Mid Durham Senior League, a remarkable record threatened in the season’s last match when Willington, dismissed for 44, adjourned across the road to the Dog and Gun for refreshments and, detecting a little rain, declined to re-emerge.

Old hands recall that it took about 40 minutes to persuade them that the sun was shining.

In 1975, National Village Cup days, the Haig handbook recorded that the club had 140 vice-presidents, 40 tea ladies and “a distinguished history.”

In 2011, however, adult cricket ceased in mid-season when both first and second teams withdrew from the Durham County League. A story sadly familiar in grass roots sport, there simply weren’t enough bodies to play or help behind the scenes (and probably not 40 tea ladies, either.)

King James, a Bishop Auckland-based team, agreed to play the following season’s fixtures on the ground and helped with junior coaching. King James secretary John Raw left the club in order to try to help breathe new life into Etherley.

Now the seniors are reborn in the Darlington and District League, up to 50 youngsters turn up for Thursday night coaching, the club fields under-11 and under-15 teams and Sport England has given £50,000 towards the pavilion.

When they played local rivals Lands in a cup match a few nights back, around 75 people were on the ground. “It was just like old times, I was even able to sell some raffle tickets,” says John, who’s 65 and recently retired as Bishop Auckland’s Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator.

When a cricket club goes, he supposes, it’s very hard to get it back. “Though clubs like Stanhope and Littletown have managed to reform, in the last two or three years we’ve lost North Bitchburn, Bearpark, Coxhoe and Ingleton; probably more.”

The new pavilion gives them a firm base in more ways than one. “The floorboards were rotten, it would have been condemned. It leaked and if it rained we had to switch off the electricity. Kids and water and electricity don’t mix.

“A sports facility like this is so important for the community. In the last few years this community has lost the Dog and Gun, both post offices and the only shop in either village.

“It’s vital that the cricket club survives, and we’re open to football, too. The area has lost a lot. We didn’t want it to lose any more.”

THE National Bible College, with which is associated sundry organisations like the British-Israel Trust and the Covenant Publishing Company, comes as a bit of a surprise.

Established at Harrow-on-the-Weald in 1932, it’s been based for a number of years in the former Etherley Literary Institute where William S Franklin, known for perhaps more than one reason as Billy the Hitter, formerly threatened windows both from within and without.

Franklin was the village schoolmaster and the cricket club’s undoubted star. Playing against Esh Winning in 1929, he smote 105 in just 24 balls. Though the total included 12 sixes, the cost to the institute’s glazing isn’t recorded.

He was also notoriously irascible. David Wilson’s marvellous club history, published in 1992, records that it was quite a common sight in the institute’s billiards room to see Billy the Hitter break a cue over his knee or hurl a ball through the window.

Memory suggests that, in the 1960s, the same building was a clothing factory belonging to Mr Ernest Lewin. Now the Bible College, whose Latin motto translates as “What is true is safe”, overlooks the cricket field, mostly providing distance learning.

They happily co-exist. “They’re very good neighbours,” says John Raw. “So far as I know, we haven’t broken any of their windows.”

THE tea room’s been done up, too. Seating’s from the Queens Head in Bishop, sports figures decorate the walls. Since these days it’s used by so many youngsters, fizzy pop has been replaced by something called sports isotonic drinks. It still tasted like pop to me.

On the wall, remarkably preserved, is a framed copy not just of the early rules but of the score card of the first recorded match, a two-innings affair between the married and single men of the parish. William Booth, married, failed to score in either innings, given out “took up ball” and “ran against the wicket.”

In the following season’s match he again made two ducks, but playing for the singletons. Mrs Booth, presumably, had seen enough.

The score card’s still decipherable, only J H Stobart accorded the suffix “esquire.” John Henry Stobart owned the pit. Etherley knew its place.

The only problem now is that the picture frames are quite literally falling to bits. “Now that we’ve sorted out the pavilion,” says John, “I wonder if we can get a grant from somewhere to buy a few good picture frames.”

HE’S been a cricket man all his life, right back to doing the tins – as they say – as a nipper at Shildon BR.

His father, the senior John Raw, was Shildon’s secretary for 52 years from 1949 – sometimes treasurer, too – in which period he moved house on five occasions, each time getting closer to the cricket ground. “I used to tell him that he might as well build a place in the car park and have done,” says his son.

Young John himself played for Shildon, later joined Willington – “I didn’t want people saying I only got my place because my dad was a selector; I was always very enthusiastic, but never very good” – and was with King James for 26 years before joining the Etherley brothers.

“I’m just one of a very good team,” he insists. “There are a lot of good people, unsung people, doing their bit from sweeping out the dressing room to cussing the roller when it won’t start.”

Sport England initially turned down a grant request, partly for reasons of footfall. “They were very good. They told us where they thought we’d gone wrong and encouraged us to try again.”

Local councils and others have also helped. Etherley stalwarts like 96-year-old Reg Tallentire and former skipper Harry Allen (“the first of the modern game leviathans,” says David Wilson) will be at the official opening at noon on Sunday.

All former players, officials and supporters are warmly invited, the opening to be followed by a match between Etherley and Evenwood Under-11s. “An inspired facility” says the Sport England plaque by the door, and so it is.

The seniors are now third in the Darlington and District League C division, though John’s not immediately bothered about promotion. “The main thing is that they enjoy what they’re doing. I’m just pleased there’s a village cricket team again. For now, let’s just be thankful for that.”