IT is with great pleasure and enormous pride that we present this coathanger to you, and we begin the year by laying down the great coathanger challenge.
It bears the name of Wedgewood & Sons, tailors, of Stonebridge, Darlington, and belonged to Raymond Wildsmith who took it with him when he moved from the town in the late 1930s to work at the Echo’s London office in Fleet Street.
It has spent the intervening 70 years slowly wending its way back home – it settled in Scarborough for a while and then in Whatstandwell, Derbyshire, and is now in Great Ayton where it is hanging around in the home of Raymond’s son, Rodney.
“It is still giving sterling service – they certainly knew how to make coat hangers in those days,” he says. “There can be few coat hangers that have travelled further and still be in use!”
Thud – that is the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down. Do you have a coat hanger with a local name on it that can come close, or even beat, the Wildsmith wanderer?
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