THE Bishop Auckland co-op might have been an egalitarian set-up, paying its divis to its members and providing the south Durham mining communities with an affordable cradle to grave service, but it still understood the British class system.
“There’s a lot of co-op housing in the streets leading down to Grey Street – Hutchinson Street, May Street etcetera – and these terraces were for the workers,” says Barbara Laurie, a former Bishop mayor.
“The managerial-type housing was up the bank on the more salubrious Etherley Lane, in Kellett Street and the two little streets behind it. It was more salubrious up there.”
The wind blew healthily in from the west – one of those two little streets is called Edge Hill because of the exposed position – and so the managers in the villas were not exposed to the noise and smells from the co-op’s slaughterhouses in those streets below. The prevailing wind whipped the smells over the town centre so they never troubled the lofty noses in the west end.
READ MORE: SEARCHING FOR GUARDSMAN WRAY IN BISHOP AUCKLAND
Last week, we were looking at the co-op-built Kellett Street because at No 7 lived Guardsman Colin Wray, who is being commemorated in the German town of Kutenholz where he died just four days before the end of the Second World War.
His father, Herbert, was an assistant master at Wolsingham Grammar School – a new detail, for those following the story – where he was the art and handiwork teacher. His maternal grandfather was the co-op grocery manager in Wolsingham, which may explain how the family ended up in the desirable managerial co-op villas in Kellett Street.
Kellett Street in 1910 and, below, as it is today when it has been subsumed into Etherley Lane
Paul Dobson points out that at the north end of the street, which has now been subsumed into Etherley Lane so that is has lost its Kellett identity, the co-op built a home for nurses. Today, it is a private residence, but it still bears two inscribed stones. The one above the door says “nurses home 1897” and the one at the top “Queen’s Jubilee”, referring to the celebrations of Victoria’s 60 years on the throne that year.
The nurses' home in Kellett Street, Bishop Auckland, is today a private house
“Opposite Kellett Street is a big house in a big garden at the top of Princes Street,” says Barbara. “It was a hospital so probably the nurses worked there.”
That big house is now very derelict (above), with old curtains blowing out of broken windows that are no longer boarded up.
Late last year, Durham County Council received a planning application, which described it as “severely dilapidated”, requesting permission to convert it into a 19-bedroom “apart-hotel”.
The building features perhaps the worst example of ornate writing in the district (above). However long you stand and look at it there is no way you can work out what the black letters in the stonework say, although once you know it was called “Clairmont”, everything falls into place.
Clairmont was built in the late 1870s and seems originally to have been a ladies’ boarding school run by the Misses Lucy and Eliza Hallam. It then became a medical establishment, best remembered as a maternity hospital, although it ended its NHS life around 2010 as a “children and family centre”.
It could certainly do with someone finding it a new use before it becomes too dilapidated to save.
MEMORIES was staring at those black letters on Clairmont (above) trying to work out what they spelled this week after visiting the Bishop Auckland Mining Art Gallery for a look at its new exhibition which opened this week.
READ MORE: OPENING OF NEW EXHIBITION AT MINING ART GALLERY
The gallery is based on the Gemini Collection of mining works which has been put together by Gillian Wales and Bob McManners. When we had spoken about the new paintings on display – particularly an emotionally charged work by Tom McGuinness showing women waiting, and wailing, at the pithead for news about the death of the mining industry – Bob turned to his latest gripe which has absolutely nothing to do with mining.
Gillian Wales and Dr Robert McManners with Tom McGuinness' Women Waiting at the Pithead in the latest exhibition at the Mining Art Gallery, Bishop Auckland Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT
He’d been looking in the dictionary for “gripe”, which is the local word for dungfork – it is first recorded being used in Durham in 1459.
He eventually found it under “graip”, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as a “three- or four-pronged fork used as a dung-fork”.
So the correct pronunciation of gripe is “grape”.
This is because it comes from an Old Norse word, “greip”, which refers to the space between the thumb and the fingers. You can see how the wide shape of a “greip” became ideal for digging into a dungy-strawy mess.
To this day, in Swedish and Danish, they use the word “greb” to mean “pitchfork” – although in English, there is a big difference between a graip and a pitchfork.
A graip, or dungfork, has four tines, or prongs, and a waist-high handle so it can be dug into the dung, whereas a pitchfork usually has two tines and a longer handle so it is ideal for pitching straw.
However, you should never confuse a pitchfork with a pitch-fork, as the latter is used in music for getting the correct pitch – you would certainly get loads of gripes if you turned up to tune a piano carrying a pitchfork over your shoulder.
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