Stumbling across some hand-hewn history

A pit village a few miles north-west of Durham, it was Sir Bobby’s birthplace. Back then, the trains would shuffle up from Durham to Blackhill, calling at Aldin Grange (“for Bearpark”), Witton Gilbert and Lanchester, but not, inexplicably, at Langley Park itself.

Now the track bed is the Lanchester Valley Way, a 13-miler essayed from Broom Park to Consett in the company of Mr Robin Hinds and of a large and inexhaustible bag of Co-op own brand butter mints.

Robin has new boots, but prefers the old ones, devils he knows. “The soles are so thin that if I stood on a sixpence I could tell you if it was heads or tails,” he says.

Though the children’s playground is named after him, little else in Langley Park appears to acknowledge the great Sir Bobby. The village does, however, have an improbable Grade II listed building.

It’s a hand ball wall, a game also known as fives and possibly a bit like squash without the rackets. “Coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings,” says the government website – “the wall is a rare survivor of a once typical structure in the mining villages of the region.”

About 6m high and 12m wide, it stands behind the Langley Park Inn – known universally thereabouts as the Blue Star.

Esh Leaves, the community newspaper, reported in 2005 that Tucker Dockray, who’d left the village as a 10-year-old in 1927, could still recall hand ball being played.

The game, it added, was highly competitive, attracted large crowds and could be waged for big stakes. By big stakes, they meant the half-a-crown a week that was a pitman’s pocket money. Miners would harden their hands for the purpose by soaking them in pickle.

The young Bobby Robson probably never even got his hands dirty, but he was awfully good with his feet.

SO was Jackie Mordue, pictured above, good enough twice to play football for England and world hand ball champion, too.

Jackie was born in Edmondsley, tacked onto Sacriston, in 1886. By the 1891 census, the family – five sons, three lodgers – were in Front Street, Witton Gilbert, and 10 years later had moved to Eighth Street. Young John Mordue was recorded as a miner working on the pit heap.

In 1907, he joined Woolwich Arsenal from Barnsley for £450 and the following season signed for Sunderland for £750 – “incredibly fast off the mark from about 10 yards, the best two-footed wing forward I ever saw,” wrote the great Charlie Buchan in his autobiography.

Mordue scored 83 goals in 299 Sunderland appearances, many of them from the spot – not missing until his 34th attempt at a time when goalkeepers were still allowed to charge from the line.

“Arguably the only man in Sunderland’s history to rival Gary Rowell,” says All the Lads, the players’ collected biographies.

Doubtless equally familiar at the Great Wall of Langley Park, he may have benefitted from the fact that the hand ball world – a bit, say, like the egg jarping world – was quite a small place.

“His speed off the mark and quick eye were unrivalled,” wrote Buchan. “The Sunderland players often made bets for him to beat opponents with one arm strapped to his back.”

On the football field, Jackie Mordue was twice capped against Ireland, played subsequently for Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, was sacked in January 1924 after 10 months as Durham City’s player/manager and ended up at Ryhope. The famous fives man died in 1938, aged just 51.

LOCAL HERO: Sir Bobby Robson

COINCIDENCE: Lady Elsie Robson, Sir Bobby’s widow, was due on Tuesday evening at the Ebac Northern League match at Tow Law, where she’s club president. It was postponed, waterlogged pitch.

Further coincidence: a book published today chronicles the life and times of Jack Greenwell, a County Durham pitman who – like Sir Bobby – managed Barcelona.

Greenwell was boss from 1913-23 and 1931-33. “Too often he is overlooked, his decade at the club boiled down to just a few sentences,” writes Rory Smith, The Times journalist who set out to mine a rich seam.

Greenwell was from Peases West, Crook – “Crook south of Sunderland” writes Smith, a little inexactly – and remains affectionately acknowledged in those parts.

His story was featured in Hewing Goals, the Jack Drum Theatre production which marked the Northern League’s 125th anniversary. Crook Town still play for a Jack Greenwell trophy. “Englishman who managed Barca even longer than Cruyff” read the headline in Tuesday’s Times.

The book’s simply called Mister, sub-titled “The man who taught the world how to beat England at their own game.”

We shall be endeavouring to get a copy.

FROM the Kings Head in Lanchester, the Last Legs walk is joined by Dianne Bell – who runs Consett FC’s canteen and is married to the club chairman – and by her friend, Pauline.

A first after 39 steps and 460 miles, Dianne carries an umbrella. “You can’t cook good chips with wet hair,” she says.

Consett are playing Ashington, these days managed by former England fast bowler Steve Harmison – back this week from a holiday in Jamaica during which they were renewing wedding vows.

On his return, the usually genial Harmi will learn that Northumberland FA have banned him for 12 weeks from all football for abusing a referee – a bit downhill from sledging by the sound of it. The club is appealing.

NATIONAL Cycle Route 715 pedals from Willington to Whorlton and is part of the Walnet to Whitby section. These cyclists clearly like their Ws.

“Mostly on road,” says the website, though not, mostly, so as you’d notice.

On foot, and with Spring in the step, 10 of us follow it last Wednesday on the Last Legs stage from Staindrop to Bishop Auckland – a delightful stroll past hamlets like Langton (which used to have the least used phone box in the North) and Hilton, which probably never had a phone box in the first place.

Bishops are on a roll, which many attribute chiefly to ace scorer Andy Johnson, but which lifelong fan Tony Duffy reckons is down to his new two-blue sandals.

Tony, the world’s No 1 Prisoner Cell Block H enthusiast, has long owned two-blue socks – “three pairs off Droylsden market nine years ago, I rotate them” – but had sought vainly for matching sandals.

“My wife spotted them in a catalogue,” he says. “They arrived a month ago. Since then we’ve never looked back.”