John North: A house divided

Some of her belongings will be auctioned for charity next week.

MARION Way will be 83 next week. At 74 she gained an MA, at 76 a PhD - "I wanted to know whether what I was thinking was fairly sound" - after which she began a challenging health service job in Darlington.

Now retired - from that, at any rate, and (blessedly) from committees - she is, among much else, writing a book on theology.

"I've always had too much to do. I don't think I've changed much," she observes. "I keep telling myself to slow down, but unfortunately I find it quite difficult."

Nor should it be supposed that this is a late burst of energy - zeal, even - designed to make up for a misspent youth.

Daughter of an eminent Oxford professor, she qualified in medicine in her home city, worked in neurology in London during the Blitz, in children's medicine in Newcastle and in tropical diseases in Liverpool before helping run two hospitals in Tanzania.

"My parents weren't very happy because they thought it was a waste of my education, but there was just a shortage of doctors out there," she says. "It was general medicine, surgery, anything which came along."

Her jolly little book, Only One Doctor, helped tell the tale both by its title and by the illustration on the cover.

Then Marion Robinson, in Tanzania she also met and ultimately married Mark Way, the English born Bishop of Masasi who was 15 years her senior. "He was very unbishoplike, very friendly," she recalls. "He couldn't keep me in order, so he married me instead."

Back home, her husband became suffragan Bishop of Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, where they adopted two children and had a 13 bedroom house with two-and-a-half acres of land, a "first class" theatre at the bottom of the garden and no staff.

When Bishop Way retired, she took a psychiatric consultancy at Earl's House hospital in Durham and was given sole responsibility for handicapped people with learning and psychological problems in the Durham, Hartlepool, Easington and Stockton areas. Now the work is covered by seven consultants.

"I was working to my capacity," says Dr Way. "Computers were in their early days and they wouldn't give me one. My wonderful secretary had to cope with all my mistakes."

Until the bishop died in 1982 they lived in Quebec, a few miles west of Durham, accompanied at different times by goats, pheasants, guinea fowl, ducks, geese and even three bullocks for fattening.

In 1985 she came to Brancepeth, that tranquil village between Durham and Crook, creating a wonderful garden verdant with perennials, visited by heron and with banties, then quail, in one corner. In the conservatory she grew grapes.

Last week, the peg upon which the story hangs, she moved again. It was barely 100 yards, but the new bungalow is much smaller and unable to accommodate the possessions of a lifetime filled to overflowing.

"I must have halved my collection of books five times, but they just seem to breed. I've downsized quite a lot from 13 bedrooms and two-and-a-half acres; something just had to go."

At the end of next week a great deal goes under the hammer at an auction in Brancepeth Castle, the sale supplemented by items given by friends - "everything from an egg whisk to a snooker table," says Margaret Dobson, who lives in the castle - and by around 50 of Marion's own paintings.

"Normally one is doing things, rushing past everything - painting is an opportunity to stay still," she says.

The entire proceeds will go to three charities: The Children's Society, St Cuthbert's Hospice in Durham and clinics back in Masasi, where there is now no functioning hospital. "It's going to be a very emotional day," she says. "I'm not sure that I'll be able to cope."

We chat in her new home, still big enough to accommodate a technologically swish study and last Friday to host her first dinner party but still an awful lot smaller than its predecessor.

"In a way I'm surprised how much I have left, but an awful lot has gone. I'm very pleased to have less clutter, and I'm sure my executors will be delighted, but there are things I still miss very much.

"Once I'd made the decision to sell, the difficult bit was really done. I didn't think the old house was that big, but apparently it was."

Tigger, her dog, is becoming accustomed to the change of scenery but wags his tail furiously on a return visit to the old and empty house, where once the books were piled floor to ceiling.

"There are some quite precious pieces in the sale but I just couldn't keep everything," she says. "I'm just a bit frightened that the auction won't raise as much as we'd hoped. It's such a business. You never realise you have so much stuff."

Margaret Dobson is much more confident that the moving story won't end in tears. "It's an extraordinary collection," she says - and where there's a will, there's probably Marion Way.

* Viewing of both the sale and of Dr Way's art exhibition is at Brancepeth Castle from 10am-7pm on Friday, February 13 and from 10am on February 14 until the auction starts at 2pm. Further details from Margaret Dobson, 0191-378-0628.

Return to Eden

ONCE as common as a twopence ha'penny ticket, Eden Buses are back on the streets of south Durham in their original red and ivory livery."It'll be like they've never been away," says Shildon lad Graeme Scarlett, who has bought the name livery and operating rights.

Formed in 1927 by the Summerson brothers, the Eden became a friendly and familiar part of life until sold to Arriva in 1995.

Graeme, once organist at Blackpool Tower ballroom, now owns Graham's Handy Buses, based in Bishop Auckland. Back to the beginning, they'll operate as Eden. "It was a very reliable service with a high reputation," he says. "We aim to continue the tradition."

STILL on the buses, the Omnibus Society marks its 75th anniversary in September with a four day "Big Red Bus Ride" from Falkirk to London, through the North-East on day two.

After the Lord Mayor's show, in which it will take part, it will go into service on London Transport - better red than any other colour at all.

"It's still the rule that they have to be predominantly red. Even Stagecoach can't use their traditional colours in London," says Peter Cardno, the Society's North-East branch chairman.

To help mark the anniversary, the Society is also preparing a book on 20 prominent bus industry people - drivers, as it were - down the years. Peter is charged with researching Norman Morton, Sunderland's transport manager from 1952-67 and the man who introduced the "notorious" flat fare token system.

Morton was also a Labour party agent. When the Tories took control (an event improbable enough in itself) they immediately scrapped the system. Morton sent a long explanation to all councillors; the borough treasurer sent him a bill for the stamps.

LINED up for an Easter Day Channel 4 special on the resurrection, as we revealed last week, the busy Bishop of Durham will also be broadcasting a Radio 3 series during Lent.

The incoming ambition of a day off every week has already gone flying out of the Auckland Castle window, we hear.

The bishop, Dr Tom Wright, has already been to Greece and the Middle east to film for Channel 4, based on his best selling book Resurrection and the Son of God.

"He shows that rigorous historical investigation into the events behind the biblical texts have clearly and conclusively proved the bodily resurrection of Jesus," says Canon Lynn Jamieson, his senior chaplain. In Canon Jamieson, of course, the bishop is preaching to the converted.

"I believe," she adds, "he knows why he believes."

FINALLY, and it must clearly be understood that this information is second hand, we hear of local lads laid good in the Sunday Sport.

Last weekend's edition was the talk of the 5s and 3s League on Monday evening - a Darlington couple who prefer to take their pleasures in the open air.

There were pictures of energetic activity in North Road, Whessoe Road and - wait for it - Cockerton bottle bank.

Cockerton bottle bank? Transparent, honest.