Mourning in Eston: 1877

A small sheaf of receipted bills, which had survived by chance in the offices of Meek, Stubbs & Barnley, has given me the material for this sad story.

It was on the afternoon of Tuesday 23 January 1877 that a jury met at the Talbot Hotel in the High Street of South Eston.  They had been called by deputy coroner James Dent to inquire into a death.

Some 25 years earlier, ironstone had been discovered in the Eston Hills.  Before the ironmaster John Vaughan and his mining engineer John Marley found that first thick seam on 8 June 1850, Eston was just a little village.  With the opening of the Eston Ironstone Mine, men began to pour in from across the country, and soon terraces of housing were thrown up and the little enclaves of South Eston, California and Eston Junction came into being.

The inquest on that January afternoon in 1877 had been called because of the death of James Scaife.  He had come to Eston from Nidderdale.  Born to linen weaver Thomas Scaife and Esther Metcalfe on 11 November 1831, he was baptised at the Pateley Bridge Wesleyan chapel.  By the time he came to Eston in the early 1860s, he had been at work for more than 20 years.  

When he was 9 years old, living with his family at the Little Kiln Hill Milestone near Glasshouses, he and his 12 year old sister Ann were working in one of the Nidderdale textile mills.  When he was 19, the family was living at Crags, near the Blazefield quarries, and he was working with his father as a gardener.  Mining was a local industry, but he hadn't chosen to work with his brother-in-law Henry Calvert, Ann's husband, who was a miner in one of the Nidderdale coal mines.  

In the 1861 census, James was 30 years old, living on his own in Pateley Bridge and driving a carrier's cart.  By the late summer of 1863 he was in Eston and had married a young widow with 3 small boys.

Elizabeth Fielding was born in 1828 to John and Jane Fielding in Skirbeck, a village on the east coast of Lincolnshire near Boston.  In the summer of 1848 she married Richard Earley, who was a few years her elder, born in 1820 to Charles and Mary Earley at Kirton in Holland, a few miles to the south of Boston.  

In the late 1850s, Richard moved to Eston to work in the ironstone mines, bringing Elizabeth and their little boy Richard.  It seems that Elizabeth had already known a good deal of grief in childbearing – after more than 10 years of marriage, Richard was her only surviving child.   

South Eston c1913:  CC-BY National Library of Scotland

There will have been familiar accents around them in their new home because a good many Lincolnshire men came to work in the Eston mines.  William Pett, a 41 year old platelayer from the same village as Richard Earley, was lodging with them in 1861.  He was probably an old friend or relation of Richard's, and they had called their new baby after him – little William Pett Earley was only a month old at the time of the census.  By then, the family was living at 71 William Street, South Eston.  It was one of the streets that led off the High Street towards the moors.

Lord Falkland fights a duel: 1809

This is the story behind this tablet in the chancel of Hutton Rudby church:

Tablet to Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland, his wife & daughter
Hutton Rudby Church

Captain Charles Cary RN, 9th Viscount Falkland, died of his wounds in the early hours of Thursday 2 March 1809.  It was about 36 hours since he had been shot in the lower part of his abdomen and the surgeon hadn't been able to find the bullet and extract it.  The autopsy would reveal the full extent of the damage – the pistol ball had wounded Lord Falkland's large intestine and lodged in his spine.  

He died as the result of a duel and he died in his opponent's house.  He was forty years old and he left a young widow with four small children.

The year 1809 had begun unpromisingly for him with a fire.

In January 1809, he and his wife and their little children were in London for the season and had taken the first floor at the fashionable Warne's Hotel in Conduit Street.  The hotel was made up of two houses – numbers 19 and 20 Conduit Street stand there now – and it stretched back towards the church of St George's, Hanover Square.  

St George's Hanover Square, by T Malton 1787

On 30 January 1809, Warne's Hotel went up in flames.  Some newspaper reports said that the fire started in Lord Falkland's dressing room because a poker had fallen from the grate.  Some said it was Lady Falkland's dressing room.  One report said that Lord Falkland rushed to the room hoping to save some cash in his writing desk, but was beaten back by the flames and that he had lost £300.  Another report said it was £200.  There were rumours that Lady Falkland lost all her jewels in the blaze.

When the alarm was raised, she was able to escape from her drawing room with the three children and the baby and take refuge in a friend's house in Oxford Street.  Meanwhile, men were dashing into the hotel to save as much of the furniture and contents as they could and servants were running up and down the stairs with as much water as they could carry.  Soon the horrified congregation in nearby St George's could see flames through the church windows.  There was a mass exodus for the door while someone, with great presence of mind, scooped up the church silver and took it to a place of safety.  The charity school children had been at the service as usual – they rushed out into the street, boys without their hats and girls without their cloaks and bonnets.  The road filled with people running in all directions.

Traffic came to a standstill as carriages four abreast blocked Bond Street.  The fire engines couldn't get through and the Earl of Chesterfield, who was Colonel of the Old St George's Volunteers, sent a party of troopers to clear the way.  Earl Percy sent his private fire engine from Northumberland House and the Duke of Portland – who was then Prime Minister and would before long die in office – helpfully sent a supply of ale to the firemen.  But first they needed water.  

When the engines reached the scene, water couldn't be had – one report said it was an hour before the firemen could get a supply.  The flames burst through the windows of the hotel with astonishing speed and the roof was soon destroyed.  

Sightseers gathered and had to be kept back by Horse Guards and Foot Guards while the wind, blowing a strong gale, blew red-hot cinders away, over and into Swallow Street and Vigo Lane in a shower of fire.  People climbed up to their rooftops to beat out the sparks.

A fire in London, 1808

In the days that followed the fire, while the hotel was rapidly being rebuilt, Lord Falkland and his family settled into Dorant's Hotel in Albemarle Street.  And now things began to look up for Lord Falkland.  While he was out and about enjoying Society life, his career prospects started to improve.  

All Saints, Hutton Rudby: who were the Cary family?

A short account of the Cary family, for visitors to All Saints' Church, Hutton Rudby who see the memorials on the chancel walls and wonder who these people were.  It includes new material, not before seen!

Sir Arthur Ingram (c1565-1642)

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War in England, a wealthy man with a shady reputation bought the manor and lands of Rudby.  His name was Sir Arthur Ingram (c1565-1642).  A hundred years after his death, Rudby passed to his descendant Isabella Ingram and her husband George Cary.  For over 150 years, the Cary family owned both Rudby and Skutterskelfe.  They remembered their dead in memorial tablets lining the walls of the chancel of All Saints, Hutton Rudby – but only three of them were buried in the churchyard.

After Mrs Isabella Cary inherited Rudby from her father in 1742, her husband George bought the neighbouring lands and manor of Skutterskelfe.  They didn't make their home close by the river in Rudby Hall opposite the church, but chose to live on the high ground of Skutterskelfe, with views across to the hills.  They called their house Leven Grove.

Soldier
43rd Regt of Foot 

General George Cary was an army officer who served under King George II and King George III.  He became a general in the 64th Regiment of Foot and then, when he was in his fifties, was given the honour of being appointed colonel of the 43rd Regiment either because he had served his king so well or because of his status in society – he was the brother of the 7th Viscount Falkland. 

George died aged 81 in 1792 at the George Inn, the ancient posting inn in Coney Street, York.  The York branch of Next stands on the site today.  He was buried at Hutton Rudby.

The old George Inn in York
reproduced with kind permission
of the family of Joseph Appleyard 

Mrs Isabella Cary died peacefully at Leven Grove and was buried with her husband on 17 April 1799.  

She was 81 years old.  She had lived through eventful times.  She had seen the  reigns of three kings – all called George – the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the early years of Britain's long wars against Revolutionary France and Napoleon Bonaparte.  

When she was a little girl of eight or nine, living with her parents Arthur and Ann Ingram at Barrowby Hall near Leeds, she had kept a pet squirrel called Bun.  He was a great favourite and so, when he died, he was buried in the garden of the Hall and the spot was marked with a gravestone.  The inscription read

The sun that sets

the next morning gets,

But Bunne gone for ever.

The flowers that die

next Spring we espy,

But Bunne we shall never.

The estates of Rudby and Skutterskelfe passed to Isabella's 22 year old grandson.  He was the son of her daughter Catherine, who had married a baronet called Sir John Russell in Hutton Rudby church in 1774.  Sir John's mansion house was Chequers in Buckinghamshire – which is often in the news today because since 1921 it has been the Prime Minister's country home.  

Chequers today (by Cnbrb)

Catherine died young and Sir John died three years later, leaving their two little boys, John and George, to be brought up by relatives.  Then John died at Chequers in 1802 aged 25 after a long illness and George died two years later of tuberculosis in Dorant's Hotel in London, aged 22.

Their mother's sister Elizabeth now inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe.  When she was 27 years old, she had been married to a 50 year old widower, Jeffery Amherst.  He was famous for his part in the Seven Years' War against France and had been commander in chief of the British forces in North America.  He built himself a large mansion house near Sevenoaks in Kent, where he had been born, and he called it Montreal Park after his most celebrated victory, the capture of Montreal in 1760.  A few years after his marriage to Elizabeth he was given a peerage, becoming Lord Amherst.  But today he is remembered for thinking it a good idea to try to infect the Native American tribes that were opposing the British with a fatal illness, the dreaded smallpox.

Lady Amherst in 1767

Lady Amherst had no children of her own but she was a mother to three – her husband's orphaned nephew and niece, William and Elizabeth Amherst, and a baby girl who was given the name Fanny Williams.  Fanny was the subject of fascinated gossip because nobody knew who her parents were.  People said she was left in a basket on Lady Amherst's doorstep, with a banknote and a letter written by an anonymous lady who appealed to Lady Amherst's great kindness to bring up her baby.  They thought Fanny must be the secret child of a high-born lady and her noble lover.  

Lady Amherst had a kindness for another girl – her cousin's granddaughter Emma Cary.  Emma is praised and her parents are remembered on a memorial tablet which Lady Amherst had placed in Hutton Rudby church after Emma's death in 1827.

Emma was the daughter of a Naval officer, Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland and his wife Christiana Anton.  Emma was born in 1805, a few months before Admiral Nelson's stunning victory over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar.  When she was 3 years old, her father was court-martialled and dismissed from the command of his ship because of "drunkenness and unofficer-like behaviour".  His career was beginning to recover when he fell into a violent quarrel with an acquaintance.  Both men had been drinking.  It led to a duel at 11 o'clock on a February morning in 1809 at Chalk Farm on the edge of London, and Lord Falkland was fatally wounded.  He died a few days later, leaving his young widow with little money and four small children – three boys and Emma.  

The poet Lord Byron was a good friend of Lord Falkland.  He wrote, "He was a gallant and successful officer; his faults were the faults of a sailor, and as such Britons will forgive them" and he did his best to help the family.  Unfortunately, Lady Falkland became quite obsessed with him, believing – as did other women who read his poetry – that she was the woman he adored.  The poor lady finally died in 1822 when Emma was 17.  Lady Amherst felt a good deal of responsibility for Emma and her brothers, as the eldest of them was her heir.  She bought him a commission in the Army and provided for them all, but Emma died at the age of 21 after four days of painful illness.  

Lady Amherst had a London townhouse in Mayfair, but her country house at Skutterskelfe and her estates in Cleveland were very dear to her.  She cherished her gardens and valued her gardener Arthur Douglas highly.  He worked for her and her family for over fifty years.  She liked her tenants to know their place – she will have expected a great deal of deference – but she made sure that her cottages were rented out with a plot of land attached to each.  It made a great difference to poor villagers if they could grow food and keep an animal or two.

Lady Amherst died at the age of 92 on 22 May 1830.  She had asked to be buried at Hutton Rudby but – we don't know why – she was buried instead in Kent with her husband.  Rudby and Skutterskelfe had belonged to a very old lady.  Now they would belong to a young man, the 26 year old Lucius Bentinck Cary, 10th Viscount Falkland.

Amelia Fitzclarence

A few months after Lady Amherst's death, Lucius married Amelia Fitzclarence in the Brighton Pavilion.  Her father was King William IV, who had come to the throne that year after the death of his brother George IV.  But Amelia was not a princess – her parents weren't married.  Her mother was the famous and much-loved actress Dora Jordan.  Actors were not socially acceptable and Dora had led a colourful life – she was not a suitable royal bride.

Soon after the wedding, Lord Falkland came north to mortgage his new estates and arrange for the old house at Skutterskelfe to be demolished and a new hall built.  This is the hall – now called Rudby Hall – that we see today.  In 1840, Lucius was appointed governor of Nova Scotia.  His three years in Canada were not successful, although he certainly looked the part of the representative of Queen Victoria – he had been described as intemperate and unforgiving, "a tall, distinguished-looking man with a stately bearing and a severe, disdainful countenance which mirrored his aristocratic conceit and sensitive self-esteem".  After Canada, he was appointed governor of Bombay and he and Amelia went out to India.

Amelia wrote a lively account of her travels in the East.  In 1858, the year after her book came out, 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 1858 she was buried in the Falkland vault on the south side of the churchyard.  A great many people came to the funeral and many were in tears as the vicar Mr Barlow spoke of her generosity to those in need and her readiness to speak to everybody  – "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."  She left one child, a son called Lucius.

Lord Falkland died in the south of France in 1884 aged 80.  He and his second wife had no children, and his son Lucius had died childless, so it was his younger brother who came into the title and inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe.  

By this time, Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary, 11th Viscount Falkland was already an old man.  He had served in the Navy from the age of 14, and became an Admiral at the age of 64 through promotions on the retired list after many years on half-pay.  But he had married a very wealthy woman, so he had no need of money.  He died childless in 1886 at the age of 80. 

His nephew Byron Plantagenet Cary became 12th Viscount Falkland.  He had served 20 years in the Army, retiring in 1883 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  In 1879 he had married a petite and energetic American heiress, Mary Reade, 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 life.  They set up a cottage hospital in Enterpen, Lord Falkland was a churchwarden and Lady Falkland was involved in all the village charities.  

But there is no memorial to either of them in the church because they were the last of the Cary family to live here.  Lord Falkland had to sell his northern estates in about 1895 because of financial difficulties caused by the business failure of his father-in-law Robert Reade.  Rudby and Skutterskelfe were bought by Sir Robert Ropner, whose family owned them for the next 50 years.

The sketch of the Old George Inn in York is reproduced with kind permission 

of the family of Joseph Appleyard

The Faceby Saints left today

It's 14 February and so it's Valentine's Day – and on this day in 1855 a party of 28 people left the little North Yorkshire hamlet of Faceby.  

They didn't expect to see their old homes again.  They didn't expect to see their loved ones again.  They were "gathering to Zion".  They were Mormons – the members of the Faceby Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They would travel by steam train, sailing ship, river steamboat, prairie waggon and on foot and they were going all the way from Yorkshire to Utah.

For the remarkable story of the Faceby Saints, how they came to be Mormons, their gruelling journey and what happened to them in Utah, begin here with my blogpost of 2 November 2012.  It's called Mormons in Faceby: 1852-55.

Wash-day drudgery gone forever!

A reminder of how much washing machines changed women's lives.  This one was a small, neat, quick machine.

Picture Post, October 30, 1948

THE BIGGEST WASHING NEWS OF THE CENTURY!

WASH-DAY DRUDGERY

GONE FOR EVER!

The NEW HOOVER ELECTRIC WASHING MACHINE – at a price that all can afford – of a size that will fit into every kitchen.

All those dreary, boring, exhausting washing days, probably in a steamy, unhealthy atmosphere – wearing yourself out, spoiling vour hands, making yourself old – are gone for ever!  The new Hoover Electric Washing Machine is here to set you free.  It's marvellously efficient in every way; does the wash for a large family in a fraction of the time taken by old-fashioned methods; is wonderfully gentle with the clothes; is suitable for every home, even the smallest; and yet costs only £25 (plus purchase tax).  Read all about it. It's the most important household development since the advent of the famous Hoover Cleaner.

MUCH MORE TIME FOR YOURSELF

You'll be amazed how quickly – yet how thoroughly – the Hoover Washing Machine will work.  You'll be through with your washing in a fraction of the time it takes you now and be free to get on  with the other jobs, free to play with the children, free to do whatever you want to do most.  You'll be delighted.  You'll no longer think of washing day with dread, you'Il take it quite happily in your stride.

NO MORE ROUGH, RED HANDS

"Washday hands", too, becomes a thing of the past.  Nothing spoils hands so much – nothing makes them look so rough and red – as constantly dipping them in hot water.  With the Hoover Washing Machine your hands get off very ligntly.  You just drop the clothes in the tub and leave the machine to do the hard work.  Right from the very first wash by this quick, new labour-saving method, you'll find your hands begin to improve – they'll be smoother, whiter, altogether more attractive.

MORE ENERGY LEFT FOR PLEASURE

After a day at the wash-tub you generally feel like slumping back in a chair and putting your feet up.  But not when you've a Hoover Washing Machine to do the hard work for you – and do it so quickly too.  Instead of washing being a long, hard job, it becomes quick and easy.  And afterwards you'll be fresh and full of go – ready to dance, go to the pictures or visit your friends.  You'll be astonished at the difference it makes, having a Hoover Washing Machine.

The gentlest way of washing clothes

No other way of washing clothes is so safe as with the Hoover Washing Machine.  It works on an entirely new principle. The "pulsator" (the device that keeps the water moving) is set in the side of the tub, thus agitating the water rather than churning the clothes – a big point when clothing coupons have to go so far.

Does the washing for a large family in record time

Besides being very gentle and very thorough, the Hoover Washing Machine is an exceptionally fast worker.  Whites and coloureds are washed in 4 minutes; woollens in 1 minute.  Even where there's a large family it does the job in a fraction of the time taken by old-fashioned methods.  It is equally successful with every type of washing – whites, coloureds, woollens, silks, etc.

Such an "easy-to-turn" wringer

The wringer, too, will absolutely delight you – it turns so beautifully easily, saving you so much effort.  It's extremely efficient, too.  The soft rubber rollers are amazingly gentle with delicate fabrics, and yet it handles easily large bulky articles such as sheets.

Low running costs – negligible electricity consumption

The Hoover Washing Machine in most cases uses less than ¼d worth of electricity to do the family wash.  It is economical with soap.  And of course, it makes an enormous difference to your laundry bills.

Hoover Dependability

Like the famous Hoover Cleaner, the Hoover Electric Washing Machine is guaranteed against faulty material and workmanship for one year.  In assition, to ensure that it continues to give washing efficiency, there is a Hoover Half-Yearly Inspection Plan.  Full details from your Authorised Hoover Dealer.

So quick … So gentle ... So thorough

and such a handy size – fits under draining board

The Hoover Washing Machine is so wonderfully compact that it can be tucked away under nearly all draining boards.  It is quite light in weight, stands on domed feet so that you can easily pull it out when you want to use it, and is just the right height for you.  It couldn't be more convenient.

AND IT'S MADE BY HOOVER

MAKERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST CLEANERS

And here's the same Hoover washing machine, but this time it's a toy dating from the late 1950s.  It's been very well used by a number of children, as its condition shows only too well.

It was a bit splashy to fill, involving jugs of soapy water from the sink, but it was very cheap to run.  In fact, it used no electricity at all.  Just child-power.

All the work is done by turning the handle, and the same handle works first the agitator in the tub and then the wringer.

This machine worked very well for a long time.  Admittedly, only a couple of handkerchiefs or a doll's dress or two would fit in, but they mangled beautifully.  The tub has finally developed a split and its working days are over ... what a shame!

A small tin box – a Teesside "garden city" – a house in Nunthorpe

Question:  what is the link between the small tin box of sweets and cigarettes given to soldiers and sailors in World War I – the Redcar suburb of Dormanstown – and the 'Red House' on Church Lane in Nunthorpe-in-Cleveland?

Answer:  they were all designed by the architects Stanley Davenport Adshead and Stanley Churchill Ramsey.

The tin: the Princess Mary Gift Fund Box

Princess Mary in 1932

In the autumn of 1914, the 17 year old Princess Mary – only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary – decided that she wanted to give every soldier at the front and every sailor at sea a Christmas gift bought from her own allowance.  It was a generous plan, but it was found to be unworkable and so it was decided instead that she should be the face of a fundraising campaign.  She wasn't simply a figurehead of the campaign – she was deeply interested in the project and followed it closely.  Her letter to the public says it all

I want you now to help me to send a Christmas present from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front.  I am sure that we should all be happier to feel that we had helped to send our little token of love and sympathy on Christmas morning, something that would be useful and of permanent value, and the making of which may be the means of providing employment in trades adversely affected by the war.  Could there be anything more likely to hearten them in their struggle than a present received straight from home on Christmas Day?

Please will you help me?

The troops' present came in the form of a small, brass, water-tight box.  For most of the men, the box contained tobacco, cigarettes and chocolate but everyone was catered for – non-smokers, nurses, Gurkhas, Sikhs, other troops from India, authorised camp followers ...

Many men sent the boxes home as a present for their wives and families; many re-used and long treasured the empty tins.  This was the box kept by the Middlesbrough solicitor, Major Thomas Duncan Henlock ("Duncan") Stubbs, a Territorial officer with the Northumbrian (Heavy) Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery.

It's a small metal tin embossed with a picture of the Princess.  In the surrounding border can be seen the words 'Belgium', 'Imperium Britannicum', 'Japan', 'Russia', 'Montenegro', 'Christmas 1914', 'Servia' and 'France'.  

There had been no difficulty in raising the money.  In fact, so much was raised – mostly from the thousands of small donations sent in by ordinary people – that there was enough to include everyone wearing the King's uniform in Christmas 1914, prisoners of war and the next of kin of 1914 casualties.  There were more difficulties, in the conditions of war time, in sourcing the contents and enough brass to make the boxes.  Gift boxes were still being sent out in 1918.  The tins were designed were designed by the architects Stanley Davenport Adshead (1868–1946) and his partner Stanley Churchill Ramsey (1882-1968).

Stanley Adshead was the first professor of town planning in this country, appointed by Liverpool University in 1909, the year of the first Town Planning Act.  He took Stanley Ramsey into his practice as a junior partner in 1910, when the King had invited him to carry out a survey for the Duchy of Cornwall estate in Kennington.

Stanley Adshead in 1927

The Garden City of Dormanstown

In 1917 Messrs Dorman, Long & Co built their new Iron and Steel Works at Redcar.  

Dorman, Long & Co were steel manufacturers, bridge builders & constructional engineers.  An internationally significant company from the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, founded by Sir Alfred and his partner Albert de Lande Long in 1875, by the 1920s it would have over a dozen iron and steelworks across Teesside, together with mines and quarries, London offices in Westminster and Cannon Street, a wharf at Battersea, offices in Manchester, Nottingham and Calcutta and associated companies in South Africa and South America.  They built bridges across the Tyne, the Nile and the Limpopo.  They made the steel for bridges in India and Burma and for the Lambeth Bridge across the Thames.  

In 1917 the USA entered the war and an end to the fighting came in sight.  It was a time of great change – there was a huge shortage of workers' housing, the iron and steel industry was in flux, there were shortages of materials and labour, and people were beginning to look to the return of the troops.  Conscription had revealed the scale of the poor state of public health.  Electoral reform was on its way.  After the war, things would and should be different.  

Dorman Long wanted to give their workers a standard of life that wouldn't simply meet minimum requirements, but would 

encourage, develop and secure that spirit of loyal service and co-operation which is recognised by enlightened employers of labour as a vital factor in the success of industrial enterprise.

The company decided to build housing for its Redcar workers – a new "Garden City" or "Industrial Village" called, at first, Dormantown and then Dormanstown.

The chosen architects were Messrs Adshead and Ramsey together with Patrick Abercrombie.

Influenced by social reformers and commentators such as Florence Bell (1851-1930) whose At the Works had been published in 1907, and in collaboration with local and central government – particularly the Ministry of Health – and after consultation with the workmen, the architects' brief was to create healthy conditions for the workforce, in stark contrast to the insanitary, overcrowded conditions of much workers' housing on Teesside, where infectious disease was rife.  

The streets of Dormanstown would be wide – there would be trees and grass, shops and facilities, play areas and open spaces – and the houses would have front and back gardens, electricity, hot and cold water and an indoor WC and bath.

They were designed in the newly fashionable Neo-Georgian style, which blended the modern desire for simplicity and regularity with the traditional look of 18th and early 19th century housing.  White-rendered houses – mostly semis, but with some short terraces – with plain frontages, sash windows and six-panelled doors were built.  They echoed the Georgian architecture of local towns and villages such as Great Ayton, Guisborough, Yarm.  

Dorlonco houses under construction, Dormanstown 1920

The first 300 houses were built of brick, but then the authorities approved an experimental prefabricated construction using precast concrete and steel.  

This was Dorman, Long's own 'Dorlonco' system.  It was described in a newspaper article of 24 July 1919 

A steel frame is first set up on similar lines to the American skyscrapers, and on this is wired strong, rough netting, as a foundation for the concrete walls

The houses could be built by the company's own workforce with easily obtainable materials, and quickly.  A 2-tonne steel frame, pre-cut and prepared in the factory, could be put up by 4 unskilled men in a day.  And as houses were urgently needed across the country, Dorlonco houses were built by many local authorities until the mid 1920s.  

Unfortunately, things didn't work out entirely as planned.  Infectious diseases like scarlet fever, TB and diphtheria persisted – the people of Dormanstown were too much exposed to the noxious fumes from the steel mills and the raw damp from the sea – and the Dorlonco system had a flaw.  When the render shrank, it exposed the steel laths and rods, which had no protective bitumen coating, to corrosion.  At Dormanstown, built on low lying, marshy land near the North Sea, salt-laden air and driving rain led to rusting.

But in the early days this wasn't known and everything looked promising.  

In the spring of 1919, Major Duncan Stubbs returned from the war.  He chose not to go back into private practice as a solicitor, but instead to put his talents as an administrator and lawyer to work in industry for an old family friend, Sir Arthur Dorman.  On 13 May 1919, he became Company Secretary of Dorman, Long.  

Major Duncan Stubbs & a Dorlonco house under construction

The Red House, Church Lane, Nunthorpe

After the War, the Stubbs family returned to live at Red Croft on Guisborough Road, Nunthorpe, and they were living there when Dorman Long got the contract to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  

Sir Arthur Dorman

In fact, Sir Arthur Dorman was at Red Croft for tea with the family one day when the telephone rang.  Duncan's teenage daughter Katharine took the call.  The caller needed an answer from Sir Arthur – she took the message and Sir Arthur instructed her to make the reply, "Yes".  When she came back into the room, he told her that she had held the fate of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in her hands.  

Sir Arthur lived near Nunthorpe and he was the village's benefactor.  He had rebuilt the village school – the new church of St Mary the Virgin would soon be built on the lane that led to Nunthorpe Grange and Morton Carr farms on land given by him – and the houses that had grown up around Nunthorpe railway station were also his work.  His great house, Grey Towers, stood a little way from the station, in parkland near the old village.  A keen horticulturalist, he had built terraced rock gardens and in his woods had planted an example of every type of tree that it was possible to grow in England.

Duncan Stubbs planned to build a house for himself on Church Lane.

In 1922, he bought the land for his new house and he chose Messrs Adshead and Ramsey to be his architects.  Their Neo-Georgian style was fashionable for the new country houses being built for upper and professional middle classes.

The house would stand in a commanding position in the rolling North Riding countryside, with a view across fields to Roseberry Topping and the Cleveland Hills.  

His 18 year old daughter Katharine laid the first brick in the foundations of the north-west corner of their new house in March 1923.  Every detail of the house's design was attended to; Mr Ramsey even designed the light switches.  

The Red House, built of locally hand-made brick with a red-tiled roof, was designed to look mellow and serene from the beginning.  The drive curved down from Church Lane towards the front door between avenues of limes, and, so that the new house would not stand in a raw, barren landscape, these trees were planted before building even began.  

The Red House, 1924
with Alfred Leonard Hill's HE (Herbert Engineering) sports car

The rooms faced south to the sun and the view of the Cleveland Hills.  The grounds would include formal gardens, lawns, orchard, paddocks, tennis courts, a kitchen garden and a wild garden.   

The Red House

The house and garage, with a yard between them, formed one long block enclosed by a continuous external wall.  The entrance from the drive was given dignity and importance by a portico and distinctive circular windows to either side of the front door, but it was the frontage to the hills – so clearly seen across the fields from the Stokesley road – that was designed to be the more imposing.  

The house consisted of: dining room, inner hall (used as a sitting room), drawing room, study, 3 large bedrooms (the master bedroom had a dressing room and there was a dressing room for guests) and 2 smaller bedrooms.  On the second floor were the maids' bedrooms, reached by back stairs.  

The service end of the house, through the green baize door near the dining room, contained the kitchen, larder, butler's pantry, scullery and washhouse.  Beyond the kitchen was a yard with the coal store – deliveries were made through the double doors which can be seen on the photograph of the front of the house – and beyond it was the garage.

The impression on crossing the threshold was of light and air.  The front inner door was of glass and the view was directly through the inner hall towards the garden and hills.  The halls, dining room, drawing room and study all had oak floors and an impressive oak staircase led to the first floor.    

From the inner hall, a couple of steps dropped down to a terrace overlooking the hills and a further flight led down to the tennis courts.  There were kennels and garages, outhouses and two tennis courts.  The house had central heating, powered by a Robin Hood Royal boiler.  The design assumed an unending supply of cheap fuel and easily available domestic staff.

Stanley Ramsey (right)
at Katharine Stubbs' wedding 

On 3 June 1924, the family moved in.  

Guests soon followed and the Visitor's Book shows that the first to arrive, in mid July, were the architect Stanley Ramsey and his wife.  Two years later, Stanley Ramsey was at Katharine Stubbs' wedding to Alfred Leonard Hill on 13 July 1926.

The Red House was an ideal house for entertaining.  

One of the earliest parties was described years later by Katharine

We gave a garden party for Dorman Long office workers to celebrate the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Tennis (two courts) on the lawn and a room cleared for dancing indoors.  Buffet in the garden.  A lovely hot day

In 1931, Duncan Stubbs was digging a hole for the back gatepost when he had a heart attack; he died at the Red House a few days later, on 18 March.  He was buried in the graveyard of the new church, his coffin carried on a farm wagon from the house – the same wagon and the same horse that had taken the coffin of Sir Arthur Dorman a few weeks before.  As they stood in the churchyard, the family could hear Duncan's dogs howling at the house – somehow they knew their master was gone.

Note:  the original garage became a separate house some decades ago, and the house itself has been much altered over the years by successive owners

Sources

For Dormanstown, see Modernity, Tradition and the Design of the 'Industrial Village' of Dormanstown 1917–1923 by Cheryl Buckley 

Journal of Design History, Vol. 23, No. 1, Model, Method and Mediation in the History of Housing Design (2010), pp. 21-41 (21 pages)

The photograph of Stanley Adshead is by Bassano, the society photographer, and is in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG x124052)

The Poltergeist at Moor Farm, North Yorkshire: 1940 to 1950

This is a record kept by Kay Hill of unnerving experiences in a moorland farm during and after World War II.

In 1938 Kay had become – in the slang of the time – a Bolter.  

She had left her very comfortable life at Carlton Manor, the country house set, the trips to London to have her hair done, the holidays abroad with her husband, the ironmaster and amateur racing driver Leonard Hill – and she had left her young daughter too – and she had run off to live with a local race horse trainer.

Kay Hill:  Filey 1939

At first they lived in Filey, where he kept his horses at Foords Hotel Stables and exercised them on the sands, but when war broke out and the beaches were closed, they moved away from the coast to live and work at a moorland farm.  

Racing continued through the war, though much reduced, because the government decided it was a boost to the country's morale.

I don't know that the current owners would want me to name the farm, so I haven't.  (Do contact me if you think you know which one it was).  And I didn't feel it right to identify Kay's partner and his sons.  I've called him Alfred and his sons Brian and Peter.  I knew Peter well; a lovely man.  The boys lived with their grandparents after they lost their mother when they were very small, aged only 2 and 4.  Kay was Katharine Stubbs, only daughter of Major Duncan Stubbs and his wife Madge Buchannan.

Kay refers to Alfred as "the farmer" in this account and she doesn't explain him at all.  This seems to be because she always intended to share the story, which she finally sent to the Incorporated Society for Psychical Research in 1977.  She kept her married name throughout her long life – she died aged 100 – she wrote under that name, and she was well known as Kay Hill in the world of Siamese cat breeding.

Her account begins in early 1940 when she was 34 years old and Alfred was 36:  

The Poltergeist at Moor Farm: 1940-1950

by Kay Hill

Moor Farm, painted by Kay Hill

According to accounts of poltergeists, including that of John Wesley's family, there is often a sound of flying & clucking & almost always someone in the house sees an animal such as a hare or a cat.  Children see it so often they have given it pet names; & this has happened in one generation after another for centuries past

References: "Poltergeists over England"  and "Poltergeists" by Sacheverell Sitwell 

War Years

Note

There was no electricity supply on the farms up the Moor Road until after the War.  
The blackout was in force and we had paraffin lamps and candles

When I first came to the farm in the late spring of 1940, I had my own furniture with me, and was given the choice of two rooms, as my bedroom.  I moved my furniture into the lighter of the rooms, and the other became the spare room.

Within a week of moving in, I had to make the enormous effort of changing over the furniture in both rooms.  It was a busy time of year on the farm, and I only had the Land Girl to help me.  My reasons for moving seemed ridiculous, and the whole thing was most unpopular.  I made an excuse that the room over the kitchen, which I still occupy, was the drier of the two; and after a day of violent effort I made my escape from the thing that had frightened me.

I had been woken up by the sound of something flying round the room, and could hear the beat of its wings.  I had the horrifying thought that it might be a bat, so I shone my electric torch, and the flying stopped.

As soon as I put the torch out, the flying started again.

I got out of bed, shut the window, and put up the blackout.  I lit the lamp and searched the top of the wardrobe, and all round the room, and under the furniture.  I opened the wardrobe door and shook the clothes.

When I went back to bed and turned the lamp out, the flying started again.  I was not at all afraid, but extremely annoyed at being kept awake.  I sat up in bed with my torch on the sheet, and when the thing was in mid flight switched it on.  The flying stopped instantly. 

The flying made a sound like the beating of wings of considerable power.  As when a woodpigeon passes low overhead at dusk, you can hear the air passing through the feathers of the wings.

This went on for some considerable time, until I lit the lamp, and went to sleep with the light on.

The next night it all started again, and continued in the same way for five successive nights.  By this time I was short of sleep, and rather frightened.  I talked about it to other people, but it sounded ridiculous and was put down to starlings, or rats, with which opinion I was inclined to agree; although I knew that I had not satisfied myself with such an easy explanation.

The last night in the room there was no flying.  I was kept awake by a carthorse on the road outside, which went up and down with a steady clop clop clop of hooves on the macadam.  I went to the window with the idea of going out and putting the horse back in the field.  I could hear no horse on the road, and our own horse was in the field near the water trough, a few yards from the house.  When I went back to bed the horse started walking again.  It was then that I realised that the sound was in the room – but like a ventriloquist throwing it about, so that it was impossible to tell from where it came.  

By this time the room frightened me, and I made up my mind to move, however much trouble it caused.  

From this time the noisy room became the spare room.  An endless succession of visitors slept in it.  My friend Mrs Macfarlane came for weeks on end, during the school term, & Brian the farmer's son came in the school holidays.  

No one ever made a complaint, and the whole thing was forgotten.  I never associated the sounds with poltergeists, because I thought of them as some sort of German forest thing, like an Irish leprechaun.  It was not until I read Sacheverell Sitwell's book on Poltergeists that I realised that the flying and the clucking were very ordinary manifestations.

When Peter, the farmer's younger son, first spent his school holidays at the farm, the whole thing was forgotten.  He was about thirteen years old, and was living with his grandparents during the time he was at Coatham School.

I found that he was burning candles in the night to such an extent, that I guessed that he was frightened.  As he had been badly bombed I put it down to this, and thought it better not to say anything to him.  At that time he was very much the ardent Boy Scout, and would rather have died than admit to any sort of fear.

I tactfully provided him with a box of nightlights and a saucer of water.  About this time he started taking the dog to his room at nights, and would search the farm rather than go to bed without him.  He was burning a night light through every night, and I began to be rather worried.

One morning he called to me, "Come and look at this."  I went into his room.  Down at the bottom of the bed by his feet were broken pieces of lamp glass and his leg was cut and bleeding.  There was a stable light standing upright on his chest of drawers minus its glass, but with the wire guard still intact around it.  It was the glass from this lamp down his bed – yet his hands were not marked.

Kay's sketch of the stable lamp

I decided to ask him to tell me his opinion of the matter.  He poured out a story of terrified nights when he dare not move in bed, because he knew there was something in the room.  Of sounds he could not account for – "I took Laddie to bed because when there was a queer noise, I would say "That was only Laddie.""

After this he was moved out of the room, and he shared a bedroom with his elder brother and there was no more trouble.

One thing that interested me – he never heard either flying or clucking.

Peter at this age was a violently active intelligent but unimaginative boy.  He never read a book, except on a technical subject, such as aircraft, motor cars, or horses.  He was extremely truthful, and would face punishment rather than tell a lie.  Since then he has become a very promising amateur jockey in point to points, and "over the sticks" and is physically afraid of nothing.  The only way in which I consider him unusual, is his intuition about people, which is sometimes so accurate as to be almost psychic.

By the summer of 1947 we had all decided that the poltergeist, if it was one, had gone for good.  Alfred (the farmer) was occupying the room, and had at various times slept with his door wide open "To let it fly out"; but he never would discuss the matter, and said that in any case he was not frightened.

At the time of the heat wave, he was away in Ireland.  I was changing the bed linen in all the rooms, and found that whereas my room over the kitchen was intolerably hot – the other room was cool.  That night I decided to sleep there.  I fell asleep not at all afraid, as it was midsummer and not dark.  I was awakened by a thunderous rap on the chest of drawers about a yard from my head, where the stable lamp had stood in Peter's day.  I did not wait for any more trouble, but went downstairs and spent the night on a sofa in the sitting room.  

In the past winter months we have had endless trouble, and a variety of manifestations which became more alarming.

Alfred reluctantly admitted that something flies; that it clucks "like a broody hen"; that it plucked at his sleeve – and gave him a sharp rap on the ankle in bed.  That it opens and shuts a door in the bedroom that isn't there, and lets in a draught.  As he sleeps with his door wide open I have at various times heard him say out loud, "Stop it" to something that is annoying him.  (He is so concerned with the horses in the yard he seldom sleeps with the door shut and seems to hear the slightest sound of anything wrong in the stableyard)

I always come out of the "ghost" room backwards, whether in daylight or at night.  I would never turn my back on that presence.  Peter and I are sometimes quite happy about going to bed, and sometimes dare not go upstairs even together.  One night I was asleep, when I felt a cat jump on my bed, and thinking it was my own, took no notice.  As I became more awake I remembered that my cat had run away months ago.  I lit a lamp, there was no cat in the room – the door was shut, and the window only open a fraction.  I called to Peter, and he came into the room.  As I was talking to him a loud wailing "Meow" came from under the bed, making us both jump.  We searched the room (which is tiny) but there was nothing there.

That was the first time we had a fright outside the usual room.  Then we both heard sounds on the landing from time to time, thumps, and a clicking noise like a parrot cracking sunflower seeds in its beak.

Sitting in the kitchen on winter evenings I frequently felt that I had just missed seeing a cat come from the bottom of the stairs and flash out of sight.

One night sitting with Peter, I saw him jerk his head round, and asked him what was the matter.  He said, "I just missed it, you know what I mean."

On one occasion when I said that I wished my cat were back to sleep on my bed and keep me company, he said, "They are no good – they are hand in glove with the other side; in league with it."

This remark coming from a boy of Peter's type is more impressive to one who knows him than to an outsider.

On the night of the Hurworth Hunt Ball early this year [1948], we were all dressed and ready to go.  Peter was in the kitchen, with the door at the bottom of the stairs closed.  I was in my bedroom with the door open, just ready to put the light out and go downstairs.  Alfred was in his room with the door open, and the light on.

There was a sliding sound on the banisters, and something that seemed like a heavy coat or a rug slid off and swished down the stairs, hitting the door at the bottom, bursting it open, and landing with a soft thump on the floor.

Peter called up to me, "What are you trying to throw at me?"  Alfred and I went out onto the landing to see what had fallen.  There was nothing to be seen either on the landing or at the bottom of the stairs.  Peter said the door flew open, and he heard something land on the floor with a thump.  The door has an old fashioned latch, and will not stay shut at all unless this is in place.  It is impossible to burst open.  (The door is tilted, like most of the house, and swings open into the kitchen unless the latch is firmly home)

One night I heard slow heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, as if someone were carrying a heavy tray.  I realised that Peter and Alfred had gone to bed when I did, and that both were in light slippers, and not in outdoor boots.  I dare not go out, or call out.  The footsteps went into the room with the open door called the attic.

In the morning both Peter and Alfred said that they had never been out of bed, and in any case their boots were downstairs.

Winter 1948.    A few weeks ago Peter and I were sitting in the kitchen listening to the racing results on the wireless at 6.25 (part of the job in a racing stable).  I had scribbled them down on a piece of paper, and he was checking them off from the runners in the daily paper.  We were both talking and laughing.

Suddenly he looked at me and turned crimson.  Then he said, "Stand up".  I stood up, and he stared behind me at the cushion at the end of the sofa.  He went white, and said, "A cat clawed itself on to the sofa and went across your knees to the cushion behind you.  It was a nearly white cat with tabby markings on its back and tail.  I didn't see its head because it was moving away from me.  I have just realised that we have no cat like that, and never have had."

At this time we were both shut in for a winter evening by the fire, and there was no cat in the room.  Neither of us was thinking of anything but racing, and I could tell by the colour of Peter's face that he was deeply distressed.  I felt nothing, and saw nothing.

Finally, a week or so ago, I was reading in bed.  Alfred was in his room and came into mine, saying "The damned thing is there."  My lamp was on a very heavy Victorian chest of drawers.  He had no sooner spoken than there was a terrific knock in the chest of drawers.  I said, "That sounded like a sledge hammer", and he said, "If you or I had picked up a hammer and hit that thing as hard as we could, we could not have made a noise like that."

The power of this noise was indescribable.  Enough to crack a chest of drawers in two.  Like a burst of thunder.  The flame of the light on the dressing table never flickered.

I have tried to trace the record of this house.  No one in the village has ever heard of it being haunted.  There is a farm record book, which people have seen, dating the house back to the 16th century.

Summing up

When I first heard the flying and the clucking I was one night alone in the house, and Peter was not there on any night.  The influence, whatever it is, comes and goes for no apparent reason, sometimes for weeks or months at a time.  The Land Girl never heard it.  Peter and I seem together to make it worse and together know when it has returned.  Someimes we have been afraid to go upstairs even together.

Alfred is not afraid but hates to talk about it.  If he can be persuaded to talk he admits its existence.

Peter tells me that when he slept in the room at the time the lamp glass was broken – he lay night after night rigid with fear and soaked in sweat, and convinced of a presence in the room.  He kept the light on, as he found that light put a stop to the thing.

1949

After the incidents in 1948 nothing happened, and it appeared that the trouble was over, and my account of it finished.

November 1949 – I heard someone feeling their way along the landing wall until they came to my door, when the groping (over the wood of the the door) changed its sound.  I thought someone was trying to go to bed without a light.  Went out, and no one was there.

A week after, the same sound halted at my door, and the feeble effort of someone trying to turn the brass door knob.  Like a child whose hands are slipping and very weak.  I was too frightened this time to go out.  I saw the handle turn half way several times.  Next morning took a look at door handle which is below door centre and possible for a child to reach.

Peter coming back from Bedale Hunt Ball 1949 saw lights moving in upper bedrooms.  I was alone in the house and in bed.  Had been terrified, and was awake when I heard the car come in.  I remembered then that on walking up from the bus in the dark I had seen lights on the ground floor pass through the 3 front rooms as if someone were carrying a faint lamp.  Was surprised to find front and back doors locked and the house empty.  I did not think much about this at the time, as hauntings were, I thought, over.

K I E Hill

December 28 / [19]49

There is no doubt that this winter the feeling is back again, but much fainter than before.  I am frightened to sleep alone in the house again, and scared of the room - although it is nothing like as bad as before.  The gropings at my door have shaken me, and I would not like this to happen if I were alone.  The thing was always malicious and rather evil.

Postscript

1950.  Had Brian staying.  Peter and I in kitchen doing racing entries.  Heard whispering voices arguing urgently and violently in next room.  They went on and on and we couldn't concentrate or catch what they were saying.  I shouted, "Will you two shut up" and dashed into the telephone room to slam the door.  No one there and Brian had gone with his father to the pub.

.........................................................

When Kay writes of the poltergeist in John Wesley's family, she is referring to the Epworth Rectory Poltergeist – cf Jeffrey the Jacobite Poltergeist: the politics of the ghost that haunted the Epworth Rectory in 1716-17  by Kelly Diehl Yates from the Wesleyan Theological Journal (2015).

It's fascinating and very readable.

The sounds of flying and clucking:  witnesses in the Epworth Rectory heard clucking and animal sounds among the thumps, raps, knocks etc, and one witness saw a rabbit-like creature.  They grew used to their visitation and 7 year old Kezzy used to have a game of chasing the noise around the house. 

The books which Kay quotes as references are:

  

Poltergeists over England by Harry Price (1945).   Harry Price was famous for exposing fraudulent mediums and is best remembered for his investigation into the Borley Rectory haunting

Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination followed by Chosen Instances by Sacheverell Sitwell (1940). With decorations by Irene Hawkins and silhouettes by Cruikshank.  Written to entertain, it was reviewed in the Aberdeen Press and Journal of 19 July 1940, which hailed Sitwell's "benevolent intention of distracting his readers' minds from present preoccupations" and said "as an 'escape' volume we have not seen its equal this war"