TODAY would be the 161st birthday of Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s longest serving Foreign Secretary who famously saw the lamps going out all over Europe at the start of the First World.
The family home of Sir Edward (above) was at Fallodon, near Alnwick, and the East Coast Main Line from Newcastle to Berwick was built across their land in the 1840s. Part of the deal negotiated by Sir Edward’s grandfather, Sir George, was that Fallodon should have its own private station, and the Greys could call on any train to stop and pick them up – a right that was only occasionally used.
In July 1847, the railway built an attractive station at Fallodon, designed by Benjamin Green – son of the architect who built Whorlton suspension bridge – in the Jacobean style at a cost of £696.
The Grey family's private halt at Fallodon in Northumberland in 1934 - the tree planted in memory of Sir Edward Grey can be seen in the centre. Picture: NERA
Sir Edward, the MP for Berwick, was chairman of both the North Eastern Railway (NER) and its successor, the London North Eastern Railway (LNER), and played a leading role in the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1925, receiving the royal guests in Darlington.
Sir Edward Grey presents the Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth, with a model of Experiment, the world's first passenger railway coach, in Darlington in 1925 at the centenary celebrations of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. Picture: NERA
He died at Fallodon in 1933 – his body was driven the 75 miles for cremation at Darlington which then had the only crematorium between the Humber and the Tweed – and railway staff arranged for a copper beech tree to be planted at the halt in his memory, a very unusual step.
When, after his death, Fallodon was sold, the railway company bought out the new owner’s stopping rights and then demolished the pretty station in the 1960s. Now travellers on the East Coast Main Line just feel they are whizzing through an anonymous cutting.
But recently, members of the North Eastern Railway Association discovered that the copper beech survives, and on Sir Edward’s birthday on Tuesday, they will be placing an information board beside it. It says the tree “forms a suitable memorial to a pragmatic and principled statesman who, despite the cares of office, never forgot his Northumberland home”.
Hopefully, we’ll have a picture of the ceremony next week. For more information about the association, go to ner.org.uk
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