Impartial wisdom of first town clerk

THE late 1860s made up the most torrid period in Darlington's political history. After the advent of the railways in the 1820s, the town had been in the pocket of two ruling families: the Peases and the Backhouses.

Gradually, resentment grew as to how those Quakers governed - and handed out lucrative municipal contracts. By the beginning of the 1860s, the local opposition demanded, to the disgust of Joseph Pease, that Darlington should have its own democratic council and its own MP.

A Parliamentary Commissioner came to Darlington to investigate and Joseph was so annoyed that, in September 1866, he resigned as chairman of the local board of health which ran the town.

The commissioner decided that Darlington deserved a proper council and the first election was held in December 1867.

"Feelings ran very high, there being two opposing parties, one mainly composed of members of the ten existing local board of health who strongly opposed any change in the administrative status of the borough," wrote a historian in 1916.

"The other party was a section of the community calling themselves the Corporationist Party, who contended that the new form of local government should be given a fair trial and that its friends were more likely to promote its efficiency than its opponents."

The maverick leader of the Corporationists was Henry King Spark, this column's old friend. He lost this bitter election to the Peases, just as he lost the 1869 Parliamentary election to the Peases when he stood to become Darlington's first MP (the 1869 election was so humiliatingly close for the Peases that they immediately set up The Northern Echo as their mouthpiece to drown out their political opponents).

In the middle of all this rancour was Hugh Dunn, Darlington's first town clerk, who lived in the wonderfully porched house called Glassensikes, in Grange Road.

Hugh was born in 1818, but lost his parents early in life and grew up with his aunt at White House Farm, in Yarm Road.

He seems not to have had much education, for in 1839 he entered the employ of solicitors Mewburn and Hutchinson as a clerk.

Francis Mewburn is renowned as the great railway solicitor who fought in Parliament against the Duke of Cleveland to get the Stockton and Darlington Railway started.

Henry Hutchinson, his partner, cropped up for the first time last week, because he lived in the biggest house in Harewood Hill and may even have owned the land on which Harewood Grove was built in about 1835.

The boy Hugh did well in the offices of Mewburn and Hutchinson, working his way up and being entrusted with many pieces of railway legalese.

In 1852, he left to join another Darlington practice, headed by John Shields Peacock, who was clerk to the local board of health. Under his tutelage, Hugh became a fully-qualified solicitor.

Hugh had other interests as well. He was editor of the Darlington and Stockton Times, The Northern Echo's weekly sister paper, for a couple of years, and he was chairman of the Mechanics Institute when it moved from its tenement beneath Central Hall to its splendid new home in Skinnergate in 1853.

In the same year, Mr Peacock spread his wings. Middlesbrough was rapidly growing and when it was incorporated as a borough it required a full-time solicitor (or town clerk). Peacock took the job, which left a vacancy in Darlington. Hugh Dunn filled it.

He was clerk to the board of health as the controversy around it grew, and after the bitter elections of 1867 - which, incidentally, the Peases' Party won - he was unanimously elected as the first town clerk. Even the Peases' opponents regarded him as impartial, wise and learnd.

In those days, Parliament was minded to give more and more power to local government, and so Hugh found himself dealing with increasingly important matters.

Gas, water and sewerage were all under his control, and he was widely praised for his calmness during "the great fight" in which the corporations of Darlington, Stockton and Middlesbrough squabbled about how much clean water each could pump from the River Tees to quench the thirsts of their growing industrial populations.

"His sympathies, though, were not cribb'd, cabin'd and confin'd to musty tomes and parchment rolls," said the D&S Times in one of its less understandable phrases.

"He had a heart brimful of tenderness, possessed cultured literary tastes and had a happy vein of humour."

During 1886, Hugh became increasingly poorly. He spent the early part of the summer at Saltburn, then moved to "the pleasant western watering place" of Morecambe Bay. He came back to Glassensikes for a couple of days before booking himself in to the Queen Hotel, in Harrogate, to take the waters.

It was the first time he had been back to Harrogate since his wife, Dorothy, had died there two years earlier while taking the waters. Hugh, too, died there within days of his arrival. He was 68.

His body was returned to Glassensikes, and he was buried in his family's vault in West Cemetery

Bakehouse Hill's link to South Villa

FOR much of last year, Echo Memories was poking its nose into Bakehouse Hill, in Darlington's Market Place.

At the start of this year we found ourselves poking around in the undergrowth of the forbidding Harewood Grove.

The two areas, naturally, are related.

Just down from the Grove is South Villa. As you drive out of Darlington on Grange Road towards the Reg Vardy roundabout, South Villa is the last house on the left before South Park.

You can see very little of the villa from the road because of its high hedges, but one look at its curiously carved gateposts and you can tell that it is old.

It was built getting on for 200 years ago on the very edge of the Backhouse family's Polam Hall estate. It had a long garden stretching down to the Skerne.

One of its earliest residents, if not its earliest, was Thomas Pease.

Thomas was a nephew of Joseph, whose statue stands on High Row and who lived just up the road in Southend.

In 1808 he announced to his strict Quaker family that he was stopping being a chemist and opening up as a wine merchant.

Legend has it that the teetotal Peases were so dismayed that they forced him to renounce his Quaker faith although, happily for him, he was quickly accepted into the Church of England.

Thomas died in South Villa in 1848. His son, Edward Thomas, got to keep the business; his daughter, the wondrously-named Margaretta Selfe, got to keep the house.

Margaretta never married. In 1890, she moved to Victoria Square, Newcastle, where she died in 1907, aged 78.

South Villa was sold in about 1900, when it was renamed Neasham House.

The connection between South Villa and Bakehouse Hill is, of course, that it was Thomas' grandson, Frank, who built the distinctive brick and terracotta shop on the corner of the Hill.

T Pease and Son moved into the shop in 1899.

Uncomfortable company and a tragic young suicide

Jonathan Moscrop grew up in Albert Hill area of Darlington, where his family were ironworkers. In the late 1870s heavy industry was hit by a dreadful recession which reduced many working class people to poverty. Jonathan and his friends, the Matthews family from Darlington, decided to emigrate to New Zealand. This is the eighth extract from his diary of their voyage

For Darlington emigrant Jonathan Moscrop sailing across the Indian Ocean, the cold weather is getting him down, the company is getting him down and then there is a suicide on board

Tuesday, March 18, 1879

There is a strong wind blowing and the sea is very rough. We have run 266 miles in the last 24 hours. The weather is growing very cold so that we need all our warm clothing now. Some of the men have had their boxes out today and there was a regular game buying and selling different articles.

Thursday, March 20

A very strong breeze blowing today from the port side, causing the ship to heel over a good deal to the starboard side. We have run 201 miles during the last 24 hours. There was a shoal of porpoises in view this afternoon, but they soon disappeared - I think we were going too quick for them to keep up with us.

While I am writing (8pm) John Matthews Junior is engaged playing draughts with a son of the Emerald Isle who is about as cheeky a young gentleman as ever I come across, but I cheer myself with the thought that we have not long to live among this lot because at the best of it, it is very uncomfortable.

Saturday, March 22

The weather is cold here, it makes me think of Christmas time in England.

Sunday, March 23

There has been a terrible affair this afternoon. A young man named David Wood jumped over the side and was drowned, although a buoy was thrown and a lifeboat lowered (the boat was lowered in about three minutes and remained away a long time). He had appeared rather melancholy for a few days previous and we had a watch put upon him, but he managed to get away at teatime and sprang overboard instantly, poor fellow. I shall long remember the look of his face as he floated by the side of the ship. His body was not found.

We have run 114 miles during the last 24 hours.

Monday, March 24

The captain had taken charge of David Wood's effects and I believe he will take them back to Scotland when he is coming back again.

Wednesday, March 26

We have a good breeze this morning and we are dashing along finely, making the foam fly about the sides.

Thursday, March 27

There is a strong wind this morning and the weather is very cold, it makes me wish for land so that I can toast my toes at a fire once more. We have run 256 miles in the last 24 hours. The weather is rather rough and occasionally comes over the side, causing us to keep our weather eye open.

Published: 26/02/2003

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.