Aerial photos of Stokesley in 1929

The new website, Britain from Above has 4 aerial photographs of Stokesley in 1929.  They centre on the church, West Green, the Market Place and Commercial Row.

The site was launched in June 2012 and is part of a programme to conserve, catalogue and digitise the Aerofilms Collection of images.  The team running the programme wants plenty of input from the public: 

The Britain from Above website features a high degree of interactivity and is designed to encourage wide public participation. Users can download images, customise their own themed photo galleries, share personal memories, and add information to enrich the understanding for each of the images. They are also invited to identity the locations of a number of “mystery” images that have left the experts stumped.

The number of images available to view on the website will continue to grow, and by 2014, some 95,000 images taken between 1919 and 1953 will be visible online.

It's very easy to use, especially through the map on the advanced search option.

Stokesley station & a Skutterskelfe farm: 1950

On 31 December 1950, the coldest day of the year, the entire stock of a Skutterskelfe farm was moved by railway from Stokesley station to Hartfield in Sussex - and it was recorded on film.

Farmer Moving South is a beautiful British Transport Films short movie, lasting 16 minutes.  It's now on youtube, but I find (on revisiting this post on 1 March 2013) that the version I originally uploaded is not available.

It's a great pity, because it was the best quality version on youtube - instead, I shall insert another version.  This one is in two halves.

The farm's name is recorded as Skutterskelfe Hall Farm - we now know it as White House Farm, Skutterskelfe.  The farmer was a son of the Ropner family, who owned the Skutterskelfe estate in the first half of the 20th century.

A time line for Stokesley

I've taken some dates from my notes to make a time line for Stokesley (which is pronounced Stowsla or Stowsley in the Cleveland dialect). 

Quite a few of the sources are now available online, so I have added links to them - and also some extracts, to inform or amuse!

1086 Domesday Book

before 1066
Stokesley had a mill and a church.  Hawarth was its lord.  Value of manor: £24

1086    
Uhtred, the King’s thegn, held the manor.  Value of manor (after the Harrying of the North): £8

1090s
Balliol family hold the manor

1224 
granting of the right to hold a yearly fair on the eve and day of St. Thomas the Martyr
(presumably 7 July – the Feast of the Translation of St Thomas the Martyr marked the day when the bones of the newly canonized Thomas à Becket were moved to a shrine in Canterbury Cathedral)

1497  Testamenta Eboracensia p 128

June 23, 1497.  I, Nicolas Conyers, being in gude and clene mynd, ordeyn and makes my testament in this wise.  To be beried in the qwer of Stokesley kirk, at the grece befor Saint Petyr.  To the high alter ij torchis, price vj s. viij d., to be lightid at the lavacion tyme while they last; and upon my herse v serges of thre pownd wax ...

Wars of words in Stokesley in the 1840s

In the 1840s, another print war broke out in Stokesley - and this time it was a war of newspapers.

The political opponents were George Markham Tweddell with his Stokesley News & Cleveland Reporter and his former employer William Braithwaite with The Cleveland Repertory & Stokesley Advertiser.

Visit the Tweddell history website and the George Markham Tweddell hub for more on the fascinating life and works of George Markham Tweddell and his wife Elizabeth, whose poetry appeared under the pseudonym Florence Cleveland.

You will also find there information on George Markham Tweddell's link to Hutton Rudby - the Rudby schoolmaster, William Sanderson, was his inspirational teacher.

Well worth a look!

Radicalism in Stokesley in the 1820s

In the turbulent 1820s, Stokesley was riven by a bitter debate between radicals and traditionalists.  Admirers of the revolutionary activist Tom Paine were at loggerheads with local conservatives and clerics.  It culminated in a war of pamphlets - the Stokesley Paper War.

The opening salvo of the Paper War

On Monday 2 June 1822, the Stokesley tradesman and employer Thomas Mease gave a speech at a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary meeting in which he attacked (without naming him, but quite unmistakably) one of the town's booksellers, Robert Armstrong.

Mease was so pleased with the reception of his speech by his fellow Methodists that in spite of his "secret feelings of considerable reluctance" he gave in to their "earnest and repeated solicitations" and arranged for it to be printed; it appeared as The Substance of a Speech soon afterwards.  The "few satyrical remarks" he had made at Armstrong's expense probably appeared to even greater advantage in the published text.

"I was exceedingly amused, Sir, by the way in which the birth-day of Paine was lately kept in this Town,"

Mease declared, comparing the usual celebratory banquets of the day with Mr Armstrong's tea party.

"What abstruse and pithy subjects were discussed on the occasion, or what powers of elocution were displayed by the motley speakers, I have not been told, nor have I given myself any trouble to learn.  The principal objects embraced by their vain, but anxious wishes, it is probable, were, the subversion of Christianity and Monarchy, and the substitution of a Republican government, together with what they strangely reckon a scientific morality.  Now, to think of such a Tea-sipping assembly of pompous literati, so tenacious of the dignity of human nature, and meditating purposes so vast, is almost enough to produce a smile of contempt in pouting melancholy herself before she is aware. And are these pedantic things to be our guides instead of Priests, and our rulers instead of Kings?"

The Stokesley Paper War had begun. 

Stokesley in 1823

As described in Baines' Directory of 1823 (the 16 pubs are listed near the end of this blog post):-

Stokesley in the wapentake and liberty of Langbargh: 9 miles from Guisborough; 9 from Yarm; and 16 from Northallerton. 

A small market town of Cleveland, consisting chiefly of one broad street, running east and west, and washed on the south by a principal branch of the river Leven, which is a remarkably fine trout stream. 

The buildings are neat, and for the most part in the modern style. 

The market is held on Saturday, and is plentifully supplied with provisions on reasonable terms.  Of the fairs which are held here, an account will be found appended to the first volume. 

The lands near the town are chiefly in grass, and occupied in small allotments.  The surrounding lands are rich and fertile, and being a fine sporting country, the situation possesses all the advantages of rural sports and agreeable retirement. 

The beautiful and majestic chain of mountains, called the Cleveland hills, including Roseberry Topping, range at a distance of from four to six miles from the town, with a peculiarly bold and romantic outline, and form a sort of semi-circular amphitheatre, of which Stokesley is the centre. 

The Live Bait Squadron 1914 - survivors from Whitby

This photograph was printed in the All Our Yesteryears section of the Whitby Gazette on 31 August 2001.  It had been brought in by John Hartley of Hinderwell, who hoped to find out more about the men pictured.  I am posting it here because I don't think this report, or the photograph, are available online.

According to the Whitby Gazette:

On 2 August 1914, a great send-off was given to the men at Whitby and news that some of them were missing plunged the fishing community and the town into grief.

A number of Naval Reservists had left town to join the Navy and 28 were believed to be on the cruisers torpedoed by submarines.

James Hall was one local man saved from the Aboukir and other men rescued were brothers Thomas, George, Harry and James Murfield, William, George and Matthew Winspear, James Wood and Thomas Dryden. 

Four brothers from one family and three from another escaped the sinking.

Mr Hall said afterwards: "I saw a lot of the Whitby lads when I was in the water and they were all right.  We were floating for about six hours but I'm no worse and I thank God for it.  We will be ready for the Germans again shortly and they will get hit back."

The following week, All Our Yesteryears was able to publish the names of the men in the picture, identified by Syd Barnett, Whitby Museum's head librarian.

From left: back, TB White, JW Hill, G Walker, G Gash, J Murfield and JR Hind; middle, G Winspear, J Hall G Murfield, W Winspear, J Wood, S Eglon, W Dryden, T Murfield; front, J Elders, H Murfield, W Hodgson, R Ventris, H Harrison and W Hall.
Matthew Winspear, another survivor, was in hospital at the time of the photograph.

I understand that reservists, including some of the Whitby men, who were posted to Chatham at the outbreak of War were followed by their wives and families, who moved to the town to be able to see more of their men when they were not at sea.  The women were able to get well-paid (though dangerous) work in the munitions factories there - this was to prove of enormous value to those who found themselves widowed and struggling to bring up their families alone.