Who were they? A guide to the memorials & stained glass of Hutton Rudby church

I'm revisiting The People behind the Plaques: memorials in All Saints', Hutton Rudby to add my most recent research.  This is a slightly shorter version, it's got more illustrations – I hope it's written in a more accessible, less formal style – and I hope it will be useful for families and visitors to the church!

This is a guide for anyone who has ever wondered about the people commemorated in the tablets, memorials and stained glass of All Saints', Hutton Rudby.

All Saints', Hutton Rudby

You've come into the church by the south door.  

If you turn to the right, you will see an alcove in the wall.  Under a trefoiled arch lies a stone slab on which is carved the figure of a mediaeval priest holding a chalice. 

Monument to a priest, Rudby-in-Cleveland 
from Church Monuments Gazetteer

This is the earliest memorial in the church, dating from between the 12th and early 14th centuries, and – tantalisingly – we don't know who the priest is.  Suggestions include Thomas de Werlington, rector of the parish in the first decades of the 14th century.  Or it could represent Walter de Kirkham, Bishop of Durham.  Or King Edward I's friend Peter of Chester – he was rector when the lord of nearby Whorlton Castle was accused of four murders and arson.  Or possibly the deeply unpleasant Hugh de Cressingham, King Edward I’s Treasurer of Scotland, who was killed in 1297 at the Battle of Cambuskenneth.  He was so loathed by the Scots that they stripped the skin from his body – accounts say his body was fat and his skin fair – and it is said that William Wallace asked for a piece large enough to be made into a sword belt.

Another ancient survival can be seen to the left of the south door – a window with a border of fragments of mediaeval glass, in which can be seen a shield with the motto of a Garter Knight: "Honi soit qui mal y pense".  The arms on the shield are those of Sir John Conyers of Hornby.  Sir John acquired the manor of Hutton by marrying Margery, daughter and co-heiress of the last Lord Darcy and Meinell whose family had been given the manor by William the Conqueror.  

It was the Meynells and Darcys who built the first church on this site in the mid 12th century.  That was in the time of King Henry II, whose lands stretched across England, much of Wales, the east of Ireland and the west of France.  In about 1300, this early church was replaced by the present building.  The tower was added 100 years later.

Until the 1530s when Henry VIII split the church in England from the Church of Rome, the scene inside the church was very different to the one we see today.  There was a rood loft – a candle-lit wooden screen – separating the chancel, where the priests ministered at the main altar, from the nave where the people gathered.  On the walls all round the nave were paintings of angels, the Last Judgement and scenes from the Bible, and images and statues of the Virgin Mary and the saints.  All round the nave were side chapels – there was an altar to St Christopher, patron saint of travellers, and another to the great Anglo-Saxon saint of the North East, St Cuthbert.    

Sir John Conyers of Hornby was one of the great survivors of the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487).

Edward IV (1442-83)

After the Yorkist victory in 1461 at the Battle of Towton, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, Edward Duke of York made himself King Edward IV in the place of King Henry VI.  But Edward's marriage to the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville led to a rift between Edward and his powerful cousin the Earl of Warwick, who was known as Warwick the Kingmaker.  So Warwick plotted to put Henry VI, then in the Tower of London, back on the throne.  

In the spring of 1469, North Country rebels under a mysterious captain called "Robin Mend-All" or "Robin of Redesdale" rose against Edward IV.  Redesdale, in the Debatable Land of the Scottish Borders, was the hideout of Henry VI's supporters, but it was clear that the rebels' centre of operations was Richmondshire in Yorkshire – and it is said that Robin was in fact Sir John Conyers of Hornby, steward for the Earl of Warwick at his castle at Middleham.  Warwick was behind the rising and he and his allies went on to defeat Edward's men at the Battle of Edgcote Field in Northamptonshire.   

Frail and bemused, Henry VI was made king again.

Warwick the Kingmaker

Then Edward IV made a savage comeback, Warwick died in the Battle of Barnet, and Henry VI was quietly murdered in the Tower.  

But Sir John Conyers was able to make his peace with Edward IV. Twelve years later, Edward's sudden death was followed by his brother Richard taking the throne in 1483, becoming King Richard III.  Sir John was so much in the new king's favour, that Richard made him a Knight of the Garter.  Two years later, Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field and Henry Tudor took the throne as Henry VII.  Yet again Sir John managed to be greatly in favour at court.  He became a knight of the body to the new king and died, laden with honours, in 1490. 

At the base of the ancient font, you can see the arms of the Conyers family carved on a stone shield.  The wooden font cover is a much more recent gift to the church.  It was donated by the brothers and sisters of William Chapman, who farmed at Old Hall, Sexhow and was a churchwarden and Superintendent of the Sunday School for many years.  He died aged 66 in 1916.

Interior of Hutton Rudby church & the window to Sir John Henry Ropner

The nearby window on the west wall shows St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and children, and St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology and the environment.  It's the only window in the church to commemorate a man – all the others are dedicated to women – and it was the last window to be created.  When it was cut into the wall in 1937, the church looked much as it does today.  The last major alterations, outside and inside, were carried out in 1923.

The window was given to the church in memory of Sir John Henry Ropner (1860-1936) of Skutterskelfe Hall by his surviving daughter, Mrs Mary Enid Stroyan.  She and her sister Margaret had married brothers, the sons of Scottish industrialist and businessman John Stroyan.

Sir John Henry Ropner's father Robert (1838-1924) was one of the many Germans who took part in the great expansion of industry on the River Tees.  He was a shipbuilder, shipowner and Conservative MP for Stockton.  In 1882 he bought Preston Hall and Park in Eaglescliffe for a family home conveniently near to his businesses and the railway station, and he bought the country estates of Skutterskelfe and Rudby a dozen years later.  Sir Robert was knighted in 1902 and made a baronet in 1904.  He was very active in public life and he and his family were generous benefactors of Stockton and Hutton Rudby and generous donors to this church.  

When Sir Robert died in 1924, he left Preston Hall to his youngest son Leonard and Skutterskelfe Hall (nowadays called Rudby Hall) to his eldest son John, who inherited the title of baronet.  Preston Hall is now the Preston Park Museum and much more information about the family can be found there.

Facing the window to Sir John is the window above the altar of the Lady Chapel.  It was given in memory of a young mother – Sir John's elder daughter Margaret.  It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary with Jesus in her arms, the martyr St Catherine of Alexandria, and St John the Baptist.  Margaret Ropner was married to a young barrister, Captain John Stroyan.  In 1927 Margaret and John were staying with his father at Lanrick Castle in Perthshire, when their car left the road and went over an embankment into Loch Lubnaig.  Captain Stroyan escaped with minor injuries but Margaret was killed.  She was 32 years old and left two young children.  

In the south wall nearby is a window to the memory of Margaret's mother, Lady Ropner.  Born Margaret MacGregor, she married John Henry Ropner in 1888 and died in 1932 aged 69.  The window shows Faith, Hope, and Charity.  Charity is in the centre, with a child in her arms and children at her feet.  Faith has a lamp, the light of faith, and Hope is blindfolded, with only one string to her harp.

The best way of examining these windows and seeing all the tiny details – especially in the east window – is to go to Dave Webster's flickr page and zoom in to the pictures 

East window, Hutton Rudby church

At the east end of the church behind the main altar can be seen the fourth window given to the church by the Ropner family.  It is the largest and finest of all – the east window by J C Bewsey.  His design expresses the worship of Christ by the whole company of saints, apostles, prophets and teachers of the church and it is filled with figures, from tiny angels at the very top of the window to the saints gathered on either side of the Cross.  You can see St George with his banner on the left and St Joan of Arc with her banner on the right.  St Oswald, King of Northumbria, is on the far right with his sword.  Beside him kneels St Cuthbert, carrying St Oswald's head.  This is because the king's head is buried with St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral.  

The window commemorates Sir Robert Ropner's wife Mary Anne Craik of Newton Stewart, who died at Preston Hall in 1921.  She and Sir Robert had been married for 65 years and had nine children. 

Elsewhere on the walls, you will find memorial tablets to Sir Robert and Mary Anne, to their youngest daughter Elsa, who had lived quietly at home with her parents and died aged 22, and to their son Sir John Henry and his wife Margaret.  The Ropner family vault can be found in the churchyard.  The family sold their estates at Skutterskelfe and Rudby after the Second World War.

On 14 May 1933, the vicar dedicated both the new east window in memory of Lady Ropner and the newly-built lych gate given by Allan Bowes Wilson.  It is hard now to imagine the church without them.  

Allan Bowes Wilson and his brother Thomas were the sons of George Wilson (1810-76), who founded the Hutton Sailcloth Mill, which stood on the Hutton side of the river.  On the photograph below, you can see the Hutton Sailcloth Mill on the other side of the bridge.

The newly-installed lych gate at Hutton Rudby church

From the mid 19th century until after the Second World War, the Wilsons were influential in the village as employers and property owners and were active in village celebrations and organisations.  Thomas Bowes Wilson, his wife and their three children lived at Enterpen Hall; Allan Bowes Wilson, who never married, lived at Hutton House with his unmarried sister.  Allan was very generous to All Saints', giving not only the lych gate but also a large donation towards the 1923 restoration and the panelling round the east end of the church.  He died in 1932 aged 93.

In the south wall of the Lady Chapel is a window showing Christ's Ascension.  It was given in memory of Maria Hutton, wife of Thomas Bowes Wilson.  She died in 1904 aged 55.  In the photograph below, which shows the south side of the church before the altar was restored to the Lady Chapel, you can see the window to Maria has been installed but the other windows are plain glass. 

Interior of Hutton Rudby church, early C20

Nearby are brass tablets to her husband Thomas, who died in 1929 aged 84, and their two sons.  

George Hutton Bowes-Wilson was a Middlesbrough solicitor who was also a Captain in the Territorials when the First World War broke out in 1914.  He died aged 38 from a sniper's bullet in 1915.  His two year old son had died only months earlier.  His younger brother John had joined the regular army and served in the Boer War.  He was a Lieutenant Colonel of 37, a married man with two little daughters, when he was killed in action in 1917. 

On the other side of the church, on the north wall, you will find a memorial to the other young men of the village who died in the war.  They came from all walks of life – stonemason, farm worker, teacher, railway porter, bank clerk … Brief biographies can be found in Fallen Leaves, a Millennium Project by the parish, on the Hutton Rudby History Society Facebook page.  

Among the young men was 21 year old George Young Blair, the only son of Mrs Mary Young Blair of Linden Grove.  

The west window, whose clear glass lights the church, commemorates Mrs Blair, a generous donor to the church and village, who donated the land on which to build the Village Hall in 1927.  She died in 1935.  She was the daughter of the Stockton industrialist George Young Blair (1826-94), who built Drumrauch Hall on Belbrough Lane as his country house.  In 1895 his family gave the church an organ in his memory – he was a man with a passion for music – which will have made a great change from the harmonium music of the previous 35 years.  (Before the harmonium was installed in 1860, a small orchestra of bassoon, oboe and strings used to play from a gallery built against the west wall in the 18th century).  The Blairs were generous donors to the village and church.  During the church restoration in 1923, the villagers were taken by bus to Drumrauch Hall where services were held in the music room.  

Nearby on the north wall is a plain white marble tablet to the memory of John Mease and his wife Hannah Geldart.  

It was John Mease who built the mill which was later developed by George Wilson and his sons into the Hutton Sailcloth Mill.  John Mease and his brother Thomas were entrepreneurs in the chancy world of the newly industrialising textile business of the early 19th century.  Together they set up a steam-powered flax-spinning mill behind Stokesley High Street, and Thomas built the New Mill (now Millbry Hill country store) beside the packhorse bridge on the River Leven.  

Hutton Rudby church and the Hutton Sailcloth Mill

In the mid-1830s, John set up his own water-powered flax-spinning mill in the field beside the Hutton Rudby bridge.  When the business didn't prosper, he moved his family to London where he was a hop factor, buying hops for the huge London brewery market, and he leased the mill buildings to George Wilson.  He kept Leven House, his home in the village, as a country escape.  It stands not far from the church, at the bottom of Hutton Bank.  His wife Hannah died in London in 1851, when their two children were aged 12 and 14.  John died at Leven House in 1876 at the age of 77.

Pulpit, Hutton Rudby church

The pulpit is a particular treasure of the church.  It was the gift of Thomas Milner of Skutterskelfe, a man who lived through the turbulent Tudor period.  He was born in 1525, the year in which King Henry VIII began to fall for the charms of Anne Boleyn.  He was 11 when Henry VIII began the dissolution of the monasteries and the religious houses of England were disbanded, and he was 14 when the monks had to leave nearby Mount Grace Priory.  At the age of 21 he inherited a one-third share in the manor of Skutterskelfe from his mother Elizabeth Lindley, and it was in Skutterskelfe that he spent his life.  He died on 7 November 1594, six years after donating the large sum of £25 to the defence of the country against the Spanish Armada.  

By the time he made his Will on 28 June 1589, the candles, images and chapels were long gone from All Saints', destroyed or removed following Henry VIII's split from the Church in Rome.  But Thomas Milner was a stout Protestant and had no regrets for the past.  He now planned to make his mark on the bare walls of the church.  His tomb was to be built into the stonework of the wall at the end of the stall where he usually sat.  It was to match the trefoiled arch in the south wall with the slab depicting the priest holding a chalice.  There was to be an inscription in copper or brass above it 

"with my grandfather’s name, my father, and mother, wife and daughter with my own name declaring the day of my death and year, and more as shall be thought good by my executors (whom I do in God’s behalf require to perform this my request)"  

The tomb is hidden now behind the organ installed in 1974, but you can see the inscription on the wall.  The family tree begins with his grandfather Thomas Lindley and ends with his grandson Sir Thomas Layton of Sexhow.  It must have taken the family some time to install it – Thomas Layton wasn't knighted until 1614.  This is the text:

"Thomas Lynley esquier married Margery the second daughter of Sr Thomas Newport knight and had issu Elizabeth marryed to Joseph Sorthwait ale [alias] Mylner esquier who had issu Thomas Mylner who marryed Frances the daughter of Willyam Baytes esquier who had issu Mary who was marryed to Charles Layton esquier and had issu Sr Thomas Laiton knight Here lyeth the body of Thomas Mylner deceased the 8oe November 1594"

Thomas Milner's surscription, Hutton Rudby church

Having dealt with his tomb, Thomas Milner left a legacy of 20 shillings (£1) to the church for the building of "a comely new pulpit for the preaching of God's word".  A pity, he said, that for the past 40 years there hadn't been better doctrine preached in the church.

In the 18th century, when the church interior was plain and white, and a flat ceiling had been installed and the arched windows replaced by sash windows such as you would have in a house, the pulpit was whitewashed as well.  It must have looked very unimpressive.  It was only during the restoration work done in 1860 that they found once more the beautiful marquetry and the name Thomas Milner underneath five coats of paint.  

Thomas, unlike his grandfather Thomas Lindley, wasn't entitled to a coat of arms of his own, so the shield bears the three griffin heads of the Lindleys and the three talbot dogs of the Gowers.  The Lindleys had acquired their lands in Cleveland through the marriage of a Lindley in the 15th century with one of the daughters of John Gower of Sexhow and Skutterskelfe, whose family had held these lands for 200 years.

The lectern, in the shape of an eagle, was carved by Alexander Park, a gentleman farmer who lived at Leven House with his elderly spinster sisters at the end of the 19th century.  Mr Park was for years the honorary secretary of the Hurworth Hunt, and was said not to have made a single enemy during all his time in office.  On his last day out with the hounds he and his old black horse had a combined age of 99.  He and his sisters were very generous and active in village and church life: the choir stalls and altar rails were given to the church by the family.

View to the chancel, Hutton Rudby church

The chancel lies beyond the pulpit and the organ.  While the plaster was stripped from the walls of the nave in the restoration of 1923, the walls of the chancel are still plastered and on them you can see the memorials to the people who owned the manors of Rudby and Skutterskelfe before the Ropner family.

Isabella Ingram inherited the manor of Rudby, which her forebear Sir Arthur Ingram had acquired in about 1634, and her husband then bought the adjoining estate of Skutterskelfe.  She was born in the early 18th century and died in 1799, so she saw the reigns of George I, George II and George III, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.  She was married to General the Hon. George Cary, the younger son of the 6th Viscount Falkland, and they had two daughters.  George and Isabella replaced the old manorial hall at Skutterskelfe with a new mansion house, which they called Leven Grove.  

George Cary died in 1792 and Isabella put up a tablet in his memory – "an honest and charitable man and a generous friend."  On Isabella's death seven years later, her daughter Elizabeth added a marble tablet with a tribute to her mother: "meekly wise and innocently chearful."

Elizabeth, Lady Amherst
by Reynolds, 1767

The estates of Rudby and Skutterskelfe came to Elizabeth after her mother's death.  She was by then about sixty years old.  In 1767 when she was 27, she was married to a 50 year old widower, Jeffery Amherst.  He was made a peer in 1776, becoming 1st Baron Amherst.  While commander of the army during the Seven Years' War (1756-63), he wanted to exterminate the Native American tribes that opposed the British and supported the policy of infecting them with smallpox.  In his later years, he was commander-in-chief of the army and was criticised for allowing it to go into decline and for refusing to give up his position until nearly senile.  He had no children, so on his death in 1797 at the age of 80 it was his great-nephew who inherited his title.  

Elizabeth, Lady Amherst died in London in 1830 aged 90, and was buried at Sevenoaks where she and her husband had lived.  Her father had bought Skutterskelfe when she was 16 years old and she must have known the area well.  She was particularly fond of a hawthorn tree at Tame Bridge on the road to Stokesley and had it protected by a railing, while the size of her legacy to her gardener shows how keen she was on her gardens and hothouses.  She left her estates to a young relative, Lucius Bentinck Cary.

Besides the tablet to her mother, Elizabeth had also erected a memorial to Lucius Bentinck Cary's parents and his sister Emma.  His father was Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland.  He was a Naval captain and a friend of the poet Lord Byron.  He died in 1809 aged 40, two days after he was fatally wounded in a duel, the result of a quarrel with another man while both were the worst for drink.  He left a young widow Christiana and four children – his heir, Lucius, was only 6 years old.  Unfortunately, Christiana became obsessed with Lord Byron and harassed him with letters until he had to put the matter into the hands of his solicitors.  

Christiana died when her son Lucius was 19 years old.  He served for a time as Captain in the 7th Foot Regiment but when he was 27 he inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe from Elizabeth Lady Amherst.  This was a piece of great good fortune as his title had brought him little by way of money.  A month or two later, immediately after Christmas 1830, he married Amelia Fitzclarence in the Brighton Pavilion in the presence of her father the King.

Amelia Fitzclarence (1807-58)

Amelia was the youngest of the ten children of the actress Dorothy Jordan and William Duke of Clarence, son of King George III and brother of King George IV.  Amelia was too young to know the happy family life that Dora and William had once enjoyed.  Her mother was so short of money that she had to go back onto the stage when Amelia was a baby, and she died when Amelia was 11.  The Fitzclarence children were in a difficult position, socially.  Their mother, a fine actress, was illegitimate herself and had several illegitimate children before she became the Duke of Clarence's mistress and gave birth to Amelia, her brothers and sisters.

After King George IV's only child Princess Charlotte died in childbirth in 1817, a crisis in the monarchy loomed.  If one of his brothers couldn't produce an heir, the crown would pass to a distant relative.  The unmarried brothers had to find wives.  Amelia's father William made a marriage that was suitable for a Royal duke and married a German princess, Adelaide.  In her, his daughters found a truly kind stepmother but there was to be no heir to the throne – Adelaide's two daughters died within weeks of birth.  In 1830 George IV died, and William and Adelaide became king and queen.

Soon after Amelia's marriage to Lucius Cary, Lucius came north to mortgage his new estates and arrange for Leven Grove, Lady Amherst's house at Skutterskelfe, to be demolished and a new mansion house built to the design of the architect Anthony Salvin.  He and Amelia were not to live in their beautiful new house for long.  When her father died in 1837 and his niece Victoria became queen, Lucius Cary took up the posts of Governor of Nova Scotia and then of Bombay.  

Skutterskelfe Hall, designed by Salvin

In 1857 Amelia published Chow-chow: Being selections from a Journal Kept in India, Egypt and Syria.  It's a lively and attractive account of her travels in the East and it can be read online today.  On 2 July 1858, she died in London at the age of 55 after a short illness.  She had particularly wished to be buried in the churchyard in Hutton Rudby.  Her body was brought north by special train and on 10 July she was buried in a vault on the south side of the churchyard.  A great number of people attended the funeral.  The Rev Robert Joseph Barlow spoke her eulogy: 

"no one was too lowly for her to address, no one was too much despised by the world for her to stoop to and think of.  Her fervent charity, embracing the wants of all, was limited only by the extent of her ability."  

He was much moved himself and many of his listeners were in tears.

In November the following year, Viscount Falkland remarried.  His new wife Elizabeth was the daughter of General Joseph Gubbins and the widow of the Duke of St Albans.  They lived in the south of France, possibly because it was cheaper, and he died there in 1884 at the age of eighty.  His only son died childless, so his brother Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary came into the title.  He was already an old man.  He had entered the navy at the age of fourteen and served in the Burmese war, rising finally to Admiral in 1870.  Naval prize money may have come his way and he married a very wealthy woman, so he left a substantial estate.  He died childless in 1886 and on his death his nephew Byron Plantagenet Cary became the 12th Viscount Falkland – and, by his uncle's Will, came into much-needed funds.

Byron Plantagenet Cary (1845-1922) had entered the army at eighteen and served twenty years, chiefly with the 35th Foot, before retiring in 1883 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  He married a petite and energetic American heiress in 1879, and for a few years in the 1890s he and his young family lived at Skutterskelfe Hall.  During that time they were generous and active in village affairs.  There is no memorial to the 12th Viscount in the church although he was a churchwarden here for a while, because the financial difficulties caused by the business failure of his father-in-law Robert Reade of New York obliged him to sell his northern estates in about 1895.  

Skutterskelfe and Rudby were bought by Sir Robert Ropner, whose descendants were benefactors of the church and village until after the Second World War.

Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill

This follows the post Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill

It has always been remembered that William Surtees, who lived in Eden Cottage at the time of the 1871 census, established a linen manufactury in Albion House, at the corner of Doctors Lane and Garbutts Lane.

This is his story.

I have come to the conclusion that William was the grandson of the William Surtees and Eden Dodds who married on 7 December 1797 in Hutton Rudby – not least because he used the name Eden for his house and as the middle name of one of his daughters.

William Surtees and Eden Dodds had several children (see here).  Their daughter Margaret Surtees married Edward Hansell of Kirklevington in 1830, while daughters Jane and Sarah had children outside marriage.  The Guisborough registers record the baptism on 15 August 1825 of William & John, illegitimate sons of Jane Surtees of Guisborough.  This was the William of Eden Cottage.  

By 1832 Jane was back in Hutton Rudby where her daughter Elizabeth was baptised on 25 July.  The Memorial Inscriptions transcription shows that Jane died the following year aged 34.  Eden and William Surtees were left with the care of Jane's 7 year old twin boys and baby daughter.  William died four years later and was buried at Hutton Rudby on 12 March 1837, aged 66.  The 1841 census shows Eden was still at work – though she was now 70 years old, she was listed as an agricultural labourer.  With her were Elizabeth, aged 10, and John, a stonemason's apprentice aged 15.  Her house must have been at the top of Enterpen; it appears directly after Hutton House in the enumerator's round of the village.  

The twin boys had both been apprenticed as stone masons.  While John was with their grandmother, the 1841 Census found William in the household of John Souter in Stockton; there was a family called Souter in Hutton Rudby, so John Souter may have been a friend or relation (see here).  Ten years later, in 1851, William Surtees, stonemason aged 25, birthplace Guisborough, was visiting Henry Fletcher in Hartlepool.

Meanwhile, his grandmother Eden lived on in Hutton Rudby.  She was still alive and still working as a farm labourer at the time of the 1851 census, but she was also described as a pauper and she was living on her own.  She died in 1854 aged 84.

By the early 1850s William was in partnership with Robert Todd of Marton-in-Cleveland.  This was just before the village was changed by the building of Marton Hall by Henry Bolckow; at the time of the 1840 White's Directory it "had in its parish 363 souls".  Marton Lodge ("a large stone mansion") was still in ruins after a fire in 1832, and St Cuthbert's church had not yet been modernised and was described as a "small ancient structure".   

Robert Todd was born in about 1820 in Shadforth, Co Durham.  He had married a Marton girl called Jane Ord of Marton and settled there.  The 1851 census shows that they had three small children and were living with her widowed father William.  

The Todd-Surtees partnership ended in 1853:

Yorkshire Gazette, 4 June 1853 

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned WILLIAM SURTEES, of Hutton, near Rudby, in the County of York, Stonemason, and ROBERT TODD, of Marton, in the same County, Stonemason, carrying on business as Stonemasons and Contractors at Marton aforesaid, under the firm of "ROBERT TODD," was this day DISSOLVED by Mutual Consent. 

All Debts due and owing to or by the said Partnership will be paid and received by the said ROBERT TODD, who will complete all existing Contracts on his own account.  As witness our hands this Twenty-Seventh Day of May, 1853. 

(Signed) WILLIAM SURTEES
ROBERT TODD
Signed by both parties in the presence of
J PEIRSON HOLT,
Solicitor, Middlesbro'

After the end of his partnership with William Surtees, Robert and the family moved into the new and growing town of Middlesbrough, to live in Corporation Road.  

William must have gone to work somewhere near Darlington, because when he married in the spring of 1856, it was registered in that district.  His wife was Hannah Thorburn.  I think she is the girl who can be found in the 1841 Census for Haggbeck, seven miles from Longtown, north of Carlisle.  She was then aged 8, the youngest child of Hannah & Thomas Thorburn, a joiner.  My conjecture has some support from the fact that the record of her death states that her father was called Thomas and that the birth of a William Surtees was registered at Longtown at the end of 1857.  As was quite common, Hannah had been near her family for the birth of her first child.

A little more than a year later William and Hannah had come across the Pennines to Hutton Rudby, where their second son Thomas was born on 14 January 1859.  William's occupation is given on the birth certificate as stonemason.

Before very long, William, Hannah and the two little boys had sailed for Australia.

They must have hoped and planned for a successful new life there.  It began with a birth, when another baby boy, Elijah, was born to them on 28 March 1862 – but the bright start did not last long.  Elijah died only weeks later on the 9 May.  His death was registered at Newtown, New South Wales and he was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery, Newtown, City of Sydney 

On 6 May 1863, less than a year later, Hannah died.  She too was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery.  And then, only a few months later on 20 January 1864, six year old William died.  His father buried him in the same cemetery as his mother and baby brother.  Only William and Thomas remained.

On 22 August 1866 William remarried.  His second wife was Clara Susan Louisa Graham of Liverpool, New South Wales. 

Clara – as can be seen from her obituary at the end of this piece – came of a family that had lived in Liverpool for a long while; their oldest family tombstone was dated 1809.  Her mother was a sister of the Lieutenant Wilson who first sighted the promontory on the southern coast which was named after him (Wilsons Promontory?).  Her brother George Graham was a Sydney solicitor; her cousin George Smith was the first Mayor of Manly.  Clara was born in Liverpool in 1834 and her memory stretched back to the dark past.  She could remember "when the present asylum was used as a military barracks, and the stocks and triangles were employed to punish rebellious convicts".  The last convict ship had arrived in New South Wales from London on Christmas Eve 1849, a dozen years before William Surtees and his family arrived.

Collingwood Paper Mills

William is described in Clara's obituary as having "built the Liverpool paper mill."  This was the Collingwood Paper Mill which, according to the website of the developers who are even now working to turn it into Liverpool's new premier destination, could produce 20 tonnes of paper per week and was the biggest employer in the Liverpool district.  

William and Clara had a little girl, Eva Eden, born in 1867.  Then, the work on the paper mill finished, William and his little family left for Yorkshire, sailing from New South Wales for London on La Hogue at the beginning of January 1868.  The passenger list in the Sydney Morning Herald of 8 January 1868 names "Mr and Mrs Surtees and child"; I expect Eva was too young to be counted.  

William returned, local boy made good, to Hutton Rudby.  Perhaps he longed for the familiar; perhaps he felt the need to show how well he had done.  He built himself a house beyond the edge of the village, in the fields between the Station Hotel at the corner of Doctors Lane and the Vicarage on Belborough Lane, and named it Eden Cottage.  There is no sign of a house on this spot in the 1861 census, so I think we can safely assume that William built it and named it after his grandmother. 

Eden Cottage & the Thorman family, 1880s
Courtesy of Sue & Bob Hutchinson

In 1869, Clara gave birth to another baby girl.  She was baptised Amy Louisa Victoria on 29 March by the Revd R J Barlow, and her father's occupation given as Builder.  The 1871 census finds them all at Eden Cottage: William, Clara, Thomas (now aged 12), Eva (aged 3) and 2 year old Amy.  Clara was by then pregnant with Laura Adelaide, who was born a short while after the census was taken and baptised on 7 August.

In the 1871 census William described himself as a builder, and in the 1872 Post Office Directory as a builder and contractor.  We catch a glimpse of his activities in this advertisement which appeared through the months of June and July 1873 – in it we can see that, having come home from Australia, he named his business Albion, the ancient name for Britain:

Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 24 June 1873 

For Sale by Private Contract,
The Albion Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills, occupying the space between Boundary-road and Dale-street, Middlesbrough, in full work, and open to inspection.
Apply, by letter, in the first instance, to William Surtees, Eden Cottage, Hutton Rudby, via Yarm.

Perhaps he was selling his Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills to finance his new scheme.  He was going to set up a sailcloth manufactury to rival the Wilsons' Cleveland Sailcloth Mill.  Why did he decide to sink his capital into this rather unlikely business?  Was he really likely to succeed?  Nobody now knows.

He called it the Albion Sailcloth Works and built it on land he had bought on the edge of the village at the corner of Doctors Lane.  This was not far from the village pond (on the opposite side of Garbutts Lane) and it had a good water supply.  Malcolm McPhie, when a boy, was shown the well that supplied a house on that corner – when the lid was lifted, he could see running water at the bottom of the well.  Surtees equipped his mill with a horizontal steam engine driving six Parker's Patent Mathematical Looms.  This was a loom for weaving Navy sailcloth and other heavy fabrics; it was developed by C E & C Parker, Dundee and was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

As for his other activities in the village, there is an interesting report from the magistrates' court in Stokesley in early January 1876:

York Herald, 15 January 1876 

Stokesley Petty Sessions
William Surtees, of Hutton Rudby, stone mason, was charged by Police-constable Thompson with being drunk on licensed premises, occupied by Eliza Raney, of the Wheat Sheaf Inn.  Defendant said that he was quite capable of talking on scientific subjects and transacting business.  Fined 5s. and costs

What can have been going on?  Mrs Elizabeth Raney was an experienced publican.  Aged 64 at the time of this incident, she had been running the Wheatsheaf since her young husband Jeremiah died in 1842.  William's scientific discussion and business transactions must have been getting rather noisy if she had to call the village policeman!

That summer, on 14 August 1876, William's son Thomas became a Merchant Navy apprentice, bound for a term of four years.  (He can be found in the Register of Apprentices available on Ancestry.co.uk).  Perhaps the voyages to and from Australia had inspired him; perhaps a love of heavy machinery was kindled in him by the equipment his father was buying.

Then, eighteen months later on 3 September 1877, William Surtees died at the age of 53.  Thomas, who was able to be at his deathbed, went to the registrar Joseph Mellanby Mease to register the death.  He gave his father's occupation as Contractor.  The cause of death was certified by Dr M C Hopgood as "Anasarca".  This is a general swelling of the whole body, probably caused in William's case by liver, kidney or heart failure.

He had hardly had time to get his enterprise up and running.  The machinery was scarcely used.

His widow Clara and Thomas Milestone, the gardener at Skutterskelfe, were his Executors and they took out Probate promptly on 28 September.  Clara then put the business up for sale – and the solicitor she chose was John George Wilson, brother of Allan and Thomas, who ran the rival business at the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill.

This notice of an auction sale to be held on 25 October 1877 gives us a great many details of this fleeting business:

Northern Echo, 13 October 1877 

Hutton Rudby, in Cleveland – Albion Sailcloth Works and Freehold Land 

TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION, at the Wheat Sheaf Inn, Hutton Rudby, in the County of York, on Thursday, October 25th, 1877, at Two for Three o'Clock in the Afternoon (subject to such conditions as shall then agreed),
Mr J J HANSELL, Auctioneer 

All that newly-erected FREEHOLD SAILCLOTH FACTORY, situated at the north end of the village of Hutton Rudby aforesaid, together with the adjoining Field of Old Grass LAND, containing 1a. 1r. 15p., or thereabouts, be the same more or less. 

The Factory comprises a large Manufacturing-room, measuring 64ft by 24ft 9in, together with Office, Storeroom, and Engine-house, and contains Six Parker's Patent Mathematical Looms, with all the necessary Preparing Frames and Finishing Machinery; also Paper Calendar, Horizontal Steam Engine, Boiler, and Cold Water Pump.  The Machinery is of the best description; it has all been recently fitted up, and is in good condition, having been but little used.  There is a capital supply of Water. 

The Land is known by the name of the "Town End Field," and is splendidly situated, with a commanding view of the Cleveland Hills and surrounding district, and having extensive frontages to high roads on the North and East boundaries thereof, it may be easily sub-divided into excellent sites for the erection of Villas or other Residences. 

Potto Station, on the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Branch of the North-Eastern Railway, is within the distance of One Mile from the Property. 

A considerable portion of the Purchase Money may be left on Mortgage of the Premises on terms to be stated at the time of sale. 

The Property will in the first instance be put up for sale in One Lot, and, if not sold, it will then be offered in such Lots as may be agreed upon. 

Further particulars may be obtained on application to Mrs WILLIAM SURTEES, Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, Yorkshire; or to 

Mr JOHN GEORGE WILSON, Solicitor,
Hutton Rudby and Durham.
Hutton Rudby, October, 1877

The Sailcloth Works came to an end and it is said that the buildings were used as a laundry and a dyeworks before being converted into the Albion House and Albion Terrace that we know today.  In a decorative detail above the windows of the Terrace is the date 1881, so this happened within a very few years of William Surtees' death.  Perhaps the conversion was the work of the builder Matthew Bewick Bainbridge, who lived in Albion House at the time of the 1881 census.

Albion Terrace in the 1930s

Clara went back to Australia with her three little girls.  I wonder when she sailed – probably as soon as she could sell up, as all her family were in New South Wales and there was nothing to keep her in England.  Thomas stayed behind, but he saw Sydney again at least once.  The crew list of the Parramatta out of London shows that he came back into Sydney harbour on 8 December 1879.  One would think he must have gone to see his stepmother and half-sisters.

His time served, Thomas can be found in 1881 working as a fitter and boarding with his father's cousins, Margaret, Thomas and William Hansell, middle-aged unmarried siblings living together at 32½ Brunswick Street, Stockton.  He married Margaret Adamson in the spring quarter of 1881 soon after the census was taken, and worked as a Marine Engine Maker.  He might well have worked for Messrs Blair & Co, the company founded by George Young Blair of Drumrauch Hall, Hutton Rudby.  By 1891 he and Margaret were living in Mount Pleasant Street, Norton-on-Tees and had four children between the ages of three and nine.  By 1901 they were at 6 Trent Street, Stockton-on-Tees with their children Annie, William, Thomas, Margaret and Eva.  William was apprenticed to a joiner and young Thomas was a junior clerk.  Thomas died in the April-June quarter of 1907 aged 49.

His stepmother Clara outlived him.  She died in 1922, the oldest resident of Liverpool, and her death merited a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1922 

MRS C SURTEES
Mrs Clara Surtees, Liverpool's oldest resident, died suddenly at her home, George-street, Liverpool, on Thursday last, at the age of 87 years and was buried on Saturday.  

She remembered Liverpool when the present asylum was used as a military barracks, and the stocks and triangles were employed to punish rebellious convicts.  Among her recollections were the scenes when hundreds of Chinese were to be seen marching through the town on their way to the diggings; another was the time when George's River was navigable as far as Liverpool.  She had seen steamers conveying supplies to the town and unloading at wat at present is the dam.  

Her husband, Mr William Surtees, built the Liverpool paper mill.  He was a Yorkshireman, and after completing that work he went with his wife and one daughter to England, residing there until his death.  Mrs Surtees then returned to her native town of Liverpool.  

Her eldest brother, the late Mr George Graham, was a well-known solicitor of his day in Sydney, and took a team of aboriginal cricketers to England so many year ago that the occurrence is well nigh forgotten.  His son, George Graham, lately retired from the position of secretary to the Government Printing Office.  Mrs Surtees's mother was a sister of Lieutenant Wilson, who first sighted the promontory on the southern coast which was named after him [Wilsons Promontory?].  A cousin, Mr George Smith, of Undercliffe, Manly, was the first Mayor of that borough.  In the Liverpool cemetery the oldest family tombstone bears date 1809.  When Mrs Surtees was 81 years of age she sustained an attack of double pneumonia, and although she recovered from it, her health was permanently impaired.

Eden Cottage, Albion House and Albion Terrace remain – a reminder of an unusual man.  The Mease brothers, the Blacket brothers and George Wilson all came from backgrounds that gave them advantages that William Surtees never had; his achievements were hard-won and cut short by his untimely death.

Hutton Rudby 1859-1908: the Cleveland Sailcloth Mill

This follows the post Hutton Rudby 1834-1849: the Flax-Spinning Mill by the bridge

George Wilson was born in Newcastle in 1810, the son of James Wilson and Mary Straker.  He was one of a large family – I have found the names of three daughters (Jane, Matilda and Mary) and six sons (William, James, John, Henry, George and Edward) and there were possibly more.   There is an account of his family, including a portrait of his father James here, 

George Wilson comes to Hutton Rudby

George arrived in Hutton Rudby as a very young man in the 1830s.  His father worked for Messrs Clarke, Plummer & Co, linen manufacturers & spinners, for 37 years at their Northumberland Flax Mill at Ouseburn.  George himself came to Hutton Rudby as a clerk to the company.  His job was to put out work to the local handloom weavers, have the cloth bleached and send it north to the firm's warehouses in Newcastle.

As R P Hastings explains in Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village c1700-1900 (1979) handloom weavers worked in shops or sheds attached to their cottages or rented nearby.  Generally, they were supplied with yarn by the manufacturer, to whom they returned the finished cloth.  Some linen went to the nearby markets, or to the ports at Stockton or Whitby, and some was sent by pack mule up to the Bigg Market in Newcastle.  It is said that there was stabling for 50 pack mules at the top of Enterpen.  

Bleaching needed plenty of water and stone troughs and, as the 18th century went on, more and more equipment and machinery.  Several local bleach grounds are known – there was one in Potto by 1700 and one in Hutton Rudby by 1727.  A bleach yard was marked near Sexhow Hall in the Sexhow Tithe Map.  A big bleaching enterprise existed at Crathorne, described by the Rev John Graves in 1808 as 

an extensive bleach-ground ... with a bleach-house, situated on the eastern brink of the Leven, (over a stone bridge of one arch,) at a little distance from, and nearly opposite to the village; which consists of two beetling mills, and a variety of other machinery, where linens are made up similar to the Irish.

In 1838 the cornmill at Rudby was also bleaching and dyeing yarn and thread.

Life in the village in the early 1830s can be seen very vividly in the story of the disappearance and supposed murder of the weaver William Huntley.  It can be found here in my book Remarkable, but still True: the story of the Revd R J Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera at Chapter 6: 1830: Suspicions of Murder and, as I say in that chapter, 

In the newspaper reports of the trial we can hear the actual voices of the villagers themselves, and their testimonies reveal a vivid picture of life at the time – lived under the scrutiny of close neighbours, often outside the houses, in the street. 

The past is brought alive: rising at dawn; shared loomshops in the yards; men drinking late at night in the kitchen of a public house; a labourer breaking stones at the roadside in return for parish relief; the local habit of poaching in the Crathorne game preserves; the little shops run by the women of the village in their own homes; the long distances people were accustomed to walk; the clothes they wore; how the village governed and policed itself; the emigration ships sailing from Whitby.

 In 1837 George Wilson went into partnership with a Mr Robinson and they took over the business in Hutton Rudby:

Newcastle Journal, 28 October 1837 

ROBINSON & WILSON,

(SUCCESSORS TO MESSRS CLARKE, PLUMMER & CO. AS) 

LINEN MANUFACTURERS,

AT HUTTON RUDBY, YORKSHIRE, AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE; 

BEG respectfully to acquaint their Friends that they have REMOVED their Stock from the Warehouse at the Northumberland Flax Mill, Ouse Burn, to a newly erected and commodious one at

No. 79, PILGRIM-STREET,

Where they intend to keep an extensive Assortment of every kind of LINEN GOODS OF CLEVELAND MANUFACTURE, for the accommodation of their Customers in this District, and where all Orders will be received and attended to from this Date.

Newcastle, Oct. 11th, 1837

George still had a warehouse in Pilgrim Street in 1864 – it is mentioned in the Shields Daily Gazette of 11 May 1864, when it was reported that his bookkeeper and manager had absconded after 26 years with the firm, taking with him at least £600 from the till.

On 9 June 1836, George Wilson married Ann Hutton in Newcastle; their son James Alder Wilson was born in 1837, followed by Allan Bowes Wilson in 1839.

Hard times for the handloom weavers

During the 1830s, the condition of handloom weavers was rapidly deteriorating.  Unemployment, falling wages and severe distress were feeding into growing political unrest and radicalism.  Resentment was increased by passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 which put an end to relief to the poor being paid through the parish and obliged them to enter the workhouse.  So a Royal Commission was set up in 1837 to enquire into the industry.

Sixteen Hutton Rudby operative weavers gave evidence, saying that, when the cost of winding, loom and shop (ie workshop) rent, sizing, grease, candles, brushes, shuttles etc had been deducted, an average weekly wage of 11s 6½d was reduced to 9s 6d.  This was higher than the average wage in many neighbouring linen villages and at least Hutton still had 157 looms at work making “linen cloth, ticks, drills, checks, and diapers” [R P Hastings:  Hutton Rudby, An Industrial Village]

All the same, conditions were bad and it is not surprising that in the spring of 1839 one of the leading Chartists, Peter Bussey, decided to visit the North Riding and urge the people to support  Chartism.  This was a radical, grass-roots, nationwide, working class movement calling above all for Parliamentary reform in the conviction that only when ordinary men had the vote would their voice be heard.

The Chartist newspaper the Northern Star & Leeds General Advertiser of 30 March 1839 gave an account of Mr Bussey's arrival in Stokesley:

The inhabitants of this place, met Mr Bussey on entering the town with a procession and banner; the banner being a white ground – motto – "England expects every man to do his duty."  He was conducted to the Black Bull Inn, in the Market-place, from one of the front windows of which he addressed the people with considerable effect; after which resolutions were passed, adopting the petition and pledging themselves to support the Convention.

(White's Directory 1840 lists 17 inns and taverns in Stokesley; the Black Bull was run by John Smith.)

 

Peter Bussey went on to an open air meeting at Swainby:

Mr Bussey addressed a meeting of the inhabitants of Swainby, a considerable village, six miles from Stokesley, in the open air, at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the inhabitants poured in from the surrounding places, namely, Osmotherley, Carlton, Faceby, Hulton, Rudby [Hutton Rudby], Potter [Potto, spelled phonetically], and Trugleby [probably Ingleby]; the whole amounting to many hundreds; a beautiful green and white flag floated in the air; the whole presenting an appearance of beauty calculated to inspire the ardent lover of liberty with a fresh impulse to go forward in defence of the rights of the masses.  

Mr Douglas, an operative shoemaker, occupied the chair, who, after a few preliminary remarks, read the National Petition to the assembly, and then introduced Mr Bussey, who was received with loud and continued cheers.  He addressed them at great length in a powerful and effective speech, which seemed to be well understood and appreciated by the intelligent but simple peasantry, of whom his audience consisted.  He was vociferously cheered throughout.  The Charter and Petition were unanimously adopted, and a vote of confidence and determination to uphold the Convention was enthusiastically carried. 

Some months later, the Chartist James Maw came to Hutton Rudby.  Maw makes a fleeting appearance in my book as he had a walk-on part as a witness in the story of William Huntley (see Chapter 6)

He held a Chartist meeting on the Green.  According to R P Hastings' Chartism in the North Riding of Yorkshire and South Durham, 1838-1848, (2004), the Revd Robert Barlow and Henry Bainbridge tried to bribe some women to disrupt the gathering.  They failed, but achieved the dismissal of Richard Joysey, a Methodist class leader who had given Maw hospitality.

The story of Henry Bainbridge and how he lost his wife and two children in the cholera epidemic of 1832 and his power and influence in village matters can be found in Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 of my book.

The situation was still bad when in 1842 Mr Harrison Terry, who was Hutton's Poor Law Guardian, was killed in a fall from his horse.  A public meeting was held and it was resolved to ask the Poor Law Commission for permission to nominate a replacement for Mr Terry for the rest of the year, and not to wait for the next elections 

since under the present depression of trade and the number of applications it is impossible to do without one ... The Paupers of Hutton require more attention than any other township

[R P Hastings' Hutton Rudby: An Industrial Village, p11]

The village was in decline.  In the ten years between the censuses of 1841 and 1851, the population of the township of Hutton was reduced from 911 to 771.  The census enumerators ascribed the fall to "the stoppage of a flax mill and the decline of handloom weaving ... which have caused the hands to migrate in search of employment".

George Wilson had come to the village when the population was at its 19th century peak of 1,027 in 1831.

George's next venture would bring back employment to Hutton Rudby.

George Wilson & the 'Cleveland Sailcloth'

Perhaps it was the opening of the North Yorkshire & Cleveland Railway Company's line from Picton Junction to Stokesley in 1857 that gave George Wilson the impetus for his bold new enterprise.  Hutton Rudby was now connected to the outside world – and the Durham coalfields – by Potto Station and the railway system.

On 18 February 1860 a rather excitable and inaccurate report appeared in the Newcastle Guardian & Tyne Mercury

HUTTON RUDBY SPINNING MILL 

This neat establishment, once the property of Messrs Blackett and Mease, and which stood so long idle, seems, in the hands of Mr George Wilson, likely to enjoy a good share of prosperity.  Gas has been attached to the premises, and eight sail cloth steam power-looms have been put into operation, besides a number of hand-looms that are dependent upon the establishment for employment.  The mill has been regularly at work during the past year, and there is every prospect of its future being still more successful.  It has been a great blessing to many poor families in Hutton and has found employment for a large number of hands in the locality.

The mill had never belonged to Blacket & Mease, and there was no gas.  However, the rest was true – George Wilson had taken a tenancy of the disused flax-spinning mill and was weaving sailcloth.  He was setting up in competition with the likes of Messrs Yeoman and Messrs J Wilford & Sons of Northallerton.  In the 1861 census he identified himself for the first time as a "sailcloth manufacturer".

Sailcloth from Cleveland Sailcloth Works.  Courtesy of Allan and Joy Barthram

His speciality was his "Cleveland Sailcloth" and he sent samples of it to the Great International Exhibition of 1862, the world fair held from 1 May to 1 November in South Kensington, on the site now occupied by the Natural History Museum

Newcastle Journal, 11 April 1862 

Hutton Rudby will be represented at the Great International Exhibition by the Cleveland sail cloth, manufactured by Mr George Wilson, and now so very extensively used and appreciated for its strength and durability.  On the 26th ult., two cases were sent off, containing eight sample rolls of splendid canvass, which will be placed on view, in a neat mahogany case with plate-glass front, made expressly for their reception in class 19 of textile fabrics.  Numerous visitors, who saw the canvass before it was sent off, were unanimous in their praise of beauty and quality.

Even his Scottish rivals, reporting on the flax and jute manufactures, praised George Wilson's canvas:

Dundee Courier, 3 July 1862 

Yorkshire comes out particularly strong in Canvas, as well as in many other kinds of Linens and Linen Yarns, and we shall notice them first.

(The report lists Messrs Wm Booth & Co, Leeds; Messrs Carter Brothers, Barnsley; Mr C J Fox, Doncaster; Mr J Gill, Headingley; Messrs W B Holdsworth & Co, Leeds; Messrs Marshall & Co, Leeds; Messrs J Wilford & Sons, Northallerton)

Messrs J Wilford & Sons ... have a beautiful display of Linen Drills, adapted for Trouserings, Vestings, &c., Bleached, Dyed, and Printed.  The patterns are very pretty, the cloth of most superior quality of material, and well woven, and the goods finished in fine style.  The goods are worthy of high commendation, as they are both very sightly, and of real merit 

Mr G Wilson, Cleveland:  Exhibit "The Cleveland Sail Cloth."  It is from extra long flax, tied up with the yarn of which it is made to shew the quality, which is most superior.  The cloth is firm, well drawn up, really good, and deserving of high praise.

Cleveland Sailcloth stamp.  Courtesy of Marie Wray

Messrs Yeoman & Co, Northallerton:  Show a neat case of Yarns, Ducks, Drills, Huckabacks, &c.  The Yarn is level and well spun, and from fine material.  The Ducks are well made, superior cloth.  The Huckabacks are good, useful cloth, and the Drills are of various finish – brown, bleached, dyed, and printed.  They would make beautiful trouserings and vestings, and are of very nice shades of colour, and admirably finished.

The Yorkshire Drills are especially deserving of notice, being very handsome, strong goods, and most suiitable for the purposes intended.  They show very favourably with similar character of Irish goods.

(The other English exhibitors of Linens are: Mr T Ainsworth, Whitehaven; Mr A Cleugh, Bromley; Messrs Costerton & Napier, Scole, Norfolk; Messrs Faulding, Stratton & Brough, London; Mr Harford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mr W F Moore, Douglas IoM Mr John Morison, Norton Tolgate, London; Messrs Stephens, Hounsells & Co, Bridport; Messrs Wilson Brothers, Whitehaven, Messrs Wilks, Brothers & Seaton, London)

Hutton Rudby church and mill
The chimneys of Leven House can be seen at the right

It was a business which required skilled hands and advertisements for the Hutton Rudby Mill can be found in newspapers through Yorkshire and Cheshire and into Scotland, for example

Leeds Mercury, 22 December 1873
WANTED, WOMEN WINDERS for heavy flax yarns; piece work, good wages and constant employment.  Apply personally or by letter to George Wilson, Sailcloth Works, Hutton Rudby 

Dundee Advertiser, 28 January 1881
TENTER (Competent) Wanted for Sailcloth Looms.  None but Steady Men Accustomed to Sailcloth need apply.  Address Cleveland Sailcloth Works, Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, Yorkshire

A tenter was the mechanic responsible for running and maintaining the power-looms, as can be seen from this letter from a Power-Loom Tenter to the Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine 1832.

There are still stories in the village of men waiting at Potto station to see girls arriving from Scotland in response to the advertisements, hoping to spot a future bride, and several men did find wives among the Scottish girls.

Hutton Bleach Works

There was a Bleach Works associated with the Sailcloth Works, It lay on the Hutton side of the River Leven but the access road was from Rudby.  This O.S. map dated 1888-1913 shows its position clearly – it is marked as The Holmes, the bleachyard having closed by then.

Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland from their website https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

I don't know if this had always been the site of the Hutton bleach grounds, but it seems very likely.  I was once told that there were the remains of machinery at the bottom of North End, where the linen manufacturer George Bewick once lived, that had been used for winching bales of cloth down to the bleach ground below.  It isn't clear whether the Bleach Works was exclusively used or operated by the Sailcloth Works nor whether it was owned by the Wilsons.  Very little is known of the Works, but there are several photographs showing the buildings with yarn hanging out on the long lines in the field in front.  According to Bulmer's Directory, twelve hands were employed at the Works in 1890.

The Bleach Works, Hutton Rudby

Men at work at the Bleach Works, Hutton Rudby

The Wilsons & the village

Meanwhile, George and his wife Ann Hutton raised a family at Hutton House, on the Green.  In 1856 their youngest child was born.  They now had four sons and a daughter: James, Allan, Thomas, John and Annie.

George was – naturally, given his position – involved in village life from the beginning.  He was a churchwarden in 1838 and it's clear he took very wisely charge of the Revd R J Barlow's accounts – for the church and the Bathurst Charity – Mr Barlow was rather slapdash about money and paperwork.  Secondary in importance to the Falkland and Ropner families of Skutterskelfe Hall, the Wilson men were significant as employers and charitable donors and their involvement can always be seen in the celebrations of royal occasions.  When the Prince of Wales married Alexandra of Denmark on 10 March 1863, the mill was very much part of the village celebrations (for a full account see here) 

A correspondent says that on the wedding day the British and Danish flags were seen waving in the air from the summits of the Cleveland Sailcloth Manufactory, and in various prominent places of the village.  The Hutton brass band sent forth its animating and melodious strains, and Mr George Wilson provided a liberal banquet for all his workmen and their wives, in which the band joined them, and all enjoyed themselves most heartily.  

Of course there were plenty of grumbles about them – and there was plenty of time for this as the Wilsons lived in the village until after the Second World War.  It has still not been forgotten that the houses at the east end of South Side and the houses of Barkers Row have little or nothing by way of garden because the land was absorbed into the own gardens and orchards of Hutton House.  For many years the cottages of Barkers Row only had windows opening onto the Green, as Mr Bowes Wilson objected to the occupants looking into his gardens.  When Mr Robson of Robsons, Painters & Decorators had an advertisement painted onto a nearby gable end on South Side – one that happened to face directly towards Hutton House – Mr Bowes Wilson objected and it was painted over.  The black paint has been washing off the brickwork for many years now.  The well which was once reached by the footpath called the Wellstand seems to have disappeared when the gardens of Hutton House were enlarged.

Three of George and Ann Wilson's children made their homes in the village.  George took Allan and Thomas into the business with him while Annie stayed at home, unmarried.  (I was told that a descendant once said that "she wasn't allowed" to marry.)  James and John both went to Oxford, James to Wadham College and John to Worcester.  James was a clergyman, becoming Rector of Crathorne in 1878; John George was a solicitor in Durham and an eminent figure in the civic life of the county.

In the summer of 1876 their father died

York Herald, 10 July 1876
Wilson. - On the 8th inst., at Hutton Rudby, Mr George Wilson, aged 66 years

and less than a fortnight later, John Mease died at Leven House.  It must have seemed like the end of an era.

Allan Bowes Wilson was then 37 years old and his brother Thomas Bowes Wilson was 31 and newly married:

York Herald, 15 June 1876
Wilson - Hutton.  On the 13th inst., at St Andrew's church, Newcastle, by the Rev Marsden Gibson, M.A., Master of the Hospital of Mary Magdalene, Thomas Bowes, third son of George Wilson, of Hutton Rudby, Yorkshire, to Maria, only daughter of John Hutton, of Claremont-place, Newcastle-on-Tyne

The brothers continued to run the mill.  The following year, because of a Chancery case in the estate of John Mease, his property in Hutton Rudby was offered for auction and the Mill was included:

A Building called the “CLEVELAND SAIL CLOTH FACTORY,”
WORKED BY STEAM POWER,
In the occupation of the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON. 

A WATER CORN-MILL,
With Iron Water-wheel, Three Pairs of Millstones, Hoist, Corn-screen, Flour Dressing Machine,
Large Granary, Cart-house, Stable, Outbuildings, Dwelling-house, and Office and Yard,
In the occupation of WILLIAM KETTON and the Executors of the late GEORGE WILSON.

I don't know what happened at the sale and whether the Wilson brothers decided to buy the freehold of their premises; I believe the Mease trustees still owned land in Hutton Rudby in 1928.

A notice in the York Herald of 28 October 1878 shows that their mother Anne died on 25 October, a couple of years after her husband.  Allan and Annie continued to live at Hutton House for the rest of their lives.  

Allan Bowes Wilson in Hutton House

There is a photograph of Allan at ease with a book with the light pouring in through the window.  He and his brother John were keen collectors of the paintings of Ralph Hedley 

Meanwhile, Thomas built Enterpen Hall for his family (see Stately Homes of Hutton Rudby)

But by 1890, the sailcloth business was beginning to slacken and neighbouring sailcloth factories closed:

Newcastle Chronicle, 17 May 1890 

Dead Industries at Stockton. - Harker's sail cloth factory, near the railway station at Stockton, which was established many years ago, and where a lucrative business was carried on for a long time, was recently closed, and the buildings are now being pulled down.  On the site of the factory, and on the bleaching field behind, a large number of superior artisan dwellings are to be erected.  Building operations have been commenced, and already a number of houses are in course of erection.

The Wilson mill continued – and was fêted in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough in 1895 for having "the prettiest warehouse in England".

R P Hastings recounts (Industrial Village, p17) from local knowledge, that the mill remained viable by supplying markets in the Baltic, including the Russian Navy, and that one of its most valuable assets was a British Admiralty contract for its well-known blue-line sail cloth.  Working hours were from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening in the summer months and from 6 in the morning until the light failed in the winter.  It was an intensely hot and noisy place and often at the end of a shift the workers would emerge covered with white lint.  

In 1900 the Wilsons installed electric lighting powered by a generator.  It was to commemorate the Relief of Mafeking – Thomas's son John Hutton Wilson was a professional soldier who served in the Boer War, where his life was saved by a sergeant later awarded the Victoria Cross.

John Hutton Wilson returns from the Boer War

This rather dark photograph shows mill workers pulling his open carriage through the village upon his return from South Africa.  (He died in the First World War, as did his solicitor brother George.  They are commemorated by brass plaques in the church)

The lighting was a "gift" to their workers because it gave them extra earning hours through the winter, but of course it was a very useful gift to the Wilsons themselves.

Hutton Rudby Sailcloth Mill seen from upstream of the bridge
Courtesy of Joyce Walker

The closure of the Mill

However, by 1908 the mill was no longer viable and it had to close.  Hastings records that a handful of families migrated to find work in Dundee and the mill machinery was sold to a firm in Leven in Fife.  The mill buildings once again were used only for meetings, until finally they were demolished in 1937 when the road was widened so that the dangerous approach to the bridge was made safer.  

Thomas's wife Maria had died on 16 April 1904 at Newcastle aged 55 (according to the National Probate Calendar); after the mill closed he left Hutton Rudby to join his daughter in Scotland.  The old mill was used as the venue of the auction of the furniture, glass, pictures and ornaments that had once graced Enterpen Hall:

Whitby Gazette, 9 July 1909

HUTTON RUDBY

One Mile from Potto Station, N.E.R.

Highly Important Unreserved Sale of Valuable Chippendale, Oak and Cabinet Furniture; Carpets, Oil-paintings, Engravings, Water-colours, Antique China and Glass, Books, etc.
MESSRS HODGSON & FARROW, honoured with instructions from T BOWES-WILSON, Esquire (who has left the district), will SELL BY AUCTION, in the old SAIL-CLOTH FACTORY, on THURSDAY & FRIDAY, July 22nd and 23rd, 1909, the FURNISHINGS & APPOINTMENTS of dining, drawing, and morning rooms, library, bedrooms, entrance hall, kitchens, and outside effects, removed from Enterpen Hall.
On View on Wednesday, July 21st, by Catalogue only, price threepence each.
Auctioneers' Offices:
Market Place, Stokesley.
Established 57 Years

Thomas died on 29 June 1929 at St Andrews.  Allan died three years later.  His death notice appeared in the newspapers after his quiet burial:

Leeds Mercury, 8 July 1932
Wilson - July 4, at Hutton House, Hutton Rudby, passed peacefully away, aged 93, Allan Bowes Wilson.  His wish was for a quiet village funeral – no mourning or flowers.  He was buried in Rudby-in-Cleveland Churchyard July 6, 1932

Allan had been a generous benefactor of the church and his last gift was the lychgate.  It was dedicated by the Rev A L Leeper in May 1933.

Lychgate at All Saints', Hutton Rudby soon after it was built by Jim Barthram. 
Courtesy of Allan & Joy Barthram

The mill buildings were demolished in 1937 so the narrow road up Hutton Bank with its dangerously tight corner could be widened and straightened.

Cottages on Hutton Bank

The photograph above shows the blind corner on Hutton Bank before the Mill and the cottages were demolished.  Leven House is to the right of the picture.

Demolition of the Mill
from the Stockton & Teesside Weekly Herald, 22 Jan 1937

The last part of the Mill to be demolished was the chimney.  The schoolchildren were taken down the bank to watch it fall.  Go to the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society's Facebook page to see Maurice Atkinson's sketch capturing the moment when it fell.  The base had been weakened by removing courses of brickwork and a rope attached partway up the chimney. The rope was tied to a steel stake, anchored in the hillside, and four men swung on the rope until the chimney started to rock, eventually falling to much cheering from the children.

Many thanks to Malcolm McPhie and the Hutton Rudby & District Local History Society's Facebook page for the photographs

Next post: Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill