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 Vassal Singers in Nunthorpe before the First World War

This was written many years ago by Kay Hill (1905-2005).  I think it must have appeared in some publication but I don't know which.  She was born Katharine Isobel Ellis Stubbs and she lived with her parents and two elder brothers at Red Croft (now 113 Guisborough Road) in the little hamlet called Nunthorpe Station.

Katharine Stubbs c1914

The Vassal Singers

They were known throughout the North Riding as the Vassal Singers, although they chanted rather than sang, and learned writers spelled the word "wassail".

They came every November, a group of boys and girls, aged between five and fifteen years old, carrying a deep, oblong, cardboard box containing a doll tucked up in bed.

I saw them first when I was six years old and never forgot the doll.  She had a china face and blue staring eyes that never closed.  Her head was on a pillow and her body covered with a counterpane of white cotton sprinkled with faded flowers, probably a scrap of material from a well-washed summer frock.

They chanted, rather than sang, on one note in our broad, delightful North Riding dialect that so clearly reflects a Scandinavian origin.  The verse, as my mother taught it to me afterwards, went, as I remember, something like this:

God bless the Maister of this hoose

And the Mistress alsaw.

And all the pretty childer

As round your table gaw.

And all your kith and kindred

As dwells both far and near.

We wish you a Merry Kissimuss

And a Happy New Year.

We gave them pennies and biscuits, cakes and apples.  My mother told me I must always keep up the custom, as she had heard that townspeople coming into the village were turning them away unkindly, believing them to be carol singers arriving far too early, just a nuisance.

They never came again after the First World War and I am told that the name of the leader, a shy, gangling boy, is alongside that of my brother on the village War Memorial.

I was enchanted by the word "Kissimuss" and taught it to my brothers when they came home from school for Christmas, until it became a family word that I am quite capable of using to this day.

I wish you a Merry Kissimuss and a Happy New Year.

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

Kay Hill lived to be 100 years old.  More of her recollections of life before the First World War can be found at Days of plenty in Redcar: a middle class household before the First World War

More of her writing can be found here 

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

Remembrance at Nunthorpe

At Nunthorpe, impressive displays by the Nunthorpe and Marton Knitters remember the fallen of the Wars and the suffering of children and animals.  This photograph from the Nunthorpe Working Together Facebook page shows the display near the War Memorial.

Midshipman Duncan Stubbs is commemorated on that Memorial.  His story can be found here.  And here is a photograph of his father's horse Jess, one of the many horses who died during the First World War, can be found here

Duncan's father Thomas Duncan Henlock Stubbs built the Red House on Church Lane, Nunthorpe and the family lived there for many years.

Midshipman John Duncan Stubbs (1899-1914)

This was written for the archives of the Live Bait Squadron Society.  

John Duncan Stubbs (always known as Duncan) was born on 24 June 1899 at Coatham on the North Yorkshire coast.  

When he was eight years old, his family moved inland to the rural hamlet of Nunthorpe Station, south of the industrial town of Middlesbrough where his father was in practice as a solicitor.  Coatham remained a familiar place; his grandparents lived there and in May 1909, when he was nearly ten years old, Duncan left the care of the governess who had taught him at home with his younger brother and became one of eleven pupils boarding at Coatham Grammar School.

By that time he had already decided that he wanted to join the Navy.

Duncan’s parents could live very comfortably on his father’s professional income – this was a time when food was cheap and domestic staff plentiful – but their finances needed careful management.  His father, Thomas Duncan Henlock Stubbs (also always known as Duncan), and mother, Margaret Isobel Buchannan (“Madge”), herself the daughter of a solicitor, had three children.  Duncan was their eldest.  His brother Hugh was nineteen months his junior, born a week before the death of old Queen Victoria, and their sister Katharine was born in 1905.  Duncan and Madge were anxious to do their best for the children.  They must have found little Duncan’s ambition a source of pride and some relief; fees for the Royal Naval Colleges were subsidised by the government and were not as high as those charged by the public schools.  This would be an ideal way of educating the boy and providing him with a career.  His younger brother’s future would have to depend on getting scholarships.

Madge & Duncan Stubbs
with Duncan, Katharine & Hugh

After two years at Coatham Grammar School, Duncan was sent in January 1911 to Pembroke Lodge, a preparatory school at Southbourne on the south coast.  His parents probably thought this would better prepare him for the Selection Committee and the entrance examination for the Royal Navy College Osborne.  He passed these hurdles in February 1912; after his death the private secretary to the First Sea Lord wrote that Duncan 

“was quite one of the best boys that ever came before the Selection Committee for Osborne & his progress at the two Colleges had only confirmed the good opinion we had formed of him.”  

Duncan Stubbs c1914

Duncan was a confident, lively boy, much liked, good at his schoolwork and excellent at sports.  At home, he led his brother and sister in fun and mischief in their rather hazardous games in the ponds and woods beside their home.  He loved the family dogs and country sports, and he and his brother and their friends were to develop a passion for motorbikes, after having been allowed to borrow the one owned by Gerald Cochrane, a close family friend.

He entered RNC Osborne in May 1912.  At the end of his first year he was one of the four boys, out of seventy, to be promoted cadet captain.  At the end of his second year he came out head of the list, being presented with the prize for the highest aggregate of marks, including seamanship and engineering.

Centre: Duncan Stubbs
Right: Geoffrey Gore-Brown

That winter his parents found the money to send him on a holiday to Switzerland; he had evidently been invited to join friends in winter sports at Klosters.  He enjoyed it enormously, sending a postcard to Gerald Cochrane asking him to persuade his father to let him have a go on the bob run:

“It is absolutely safe on the run we use but the people I am staying with will not take the responsibility.  [Added at the top of the postcard] You might put it v. gently”

He entered RNC Dartmouth in May 1914, a few weeks before his fifteenth birthday.  His grandmother sent him a postal order (“I will give your mother another five shillings to keep till you may require it later on”) and his father wrote, 

“I hope you will have a happy day and many happy and useful years.  You are beginning to get to an age not far removed from early manhood and you will meet new troubles and difficulties but if you face these squarely and are determined to stick to the right you will pull through alright.”

Duncan expected to go home on leave in early August and was longing to try out the motorbike that his father had recently bought.  The family expected him back on the 6th, but on 4 August they received a postcard from the college saying that Duncan had been sent to his war station at Chatham.  That evening, his father, an officer in the Territorial Army, received his own order to mobilise.  He and his Battery (the Northumbrian North Riding Heavy Battery) were posted to Tyneside, where he would be joined by Madge and the younger children within a few days, and he was promoted Major. 

Within a day or two, the family heard from Duncan.  The order to mobilise had arrived during a game of cricket, but everything was packed and down to the station in a very short time and, he being placed in charge of nine other boys, they had travelled through the night to Chatham where he joined HMS Aboukir as senior acting midshipman.  Duncan wrote to Gerald Cochrane,

“I say you might sort of reassure my mother and tell ’em that it is nothing serious as I think Mother will start to fret.  I would be very grateful if you would.  I am in the ‘Aboukir’ cruiser and we will not probably see service unless there is a real set to.  I am sorry that I won’t be back yet to ride the bike.  Do you realise that 1915 Douglases have 3 speed gears?  Well I hope I will meet you again and until then, adieu … [written in a corner of the postcard]  I have an idea we will meet sometime and have a gorgeous time on our Bikes”

Duncan evidently wrote home when he could, but the letters have not survived.  He wrote in a postcard to Gerald Cochrane dated 25 August,  

“We are having a very fine time.  After the days work we go & do gym on the quarter-deck to keep us in training.  I am writing a PC [postcard] which gets through the GPO & censure [censor] quickest.  I am keeping a diary.  I wonder how the works are standing the strain.   Will they hold out?  [Cochrane was an ironmaster] I wonder what the Daily Mail’s accounts of the War looks like?  All headlines I suppose.  We get our news by wireless & then get the stale papers which are about our only form of literature.”

On 21 September, the day before the disaster, his parents received an account of him from the mother of another midshipman.  This was Mrs Wilson, mother of Alisdair, and she wrote because HMS Aboukir had been at Chatham recoaling and repairing for four days in mid-September, and she had gone to visit her son.  She had invited Duncan to join them; later she was to tell Madge that in his letter of thanks to her for her kindness, Duncan had written, “Next time I shall hope to have my Mother but she is so far away in Newcastle.”  Mrs Wilson reported that, all the boys being promoted midshipmen, there had been much competition amongst them to be the first in having the midshipman’s patches put on their uniforms.  Duncan, she told his parents, was as full of life and spirits as a boy could be.  Indeed, it’s clear that Duncan enjoyed every moment of his time on board ship.  It was, for him, the most enormous adventure and he excelled at his work.  

The gunnery lieutenant, John Bernard Hughes, wrote to Duncan and Madge on 24 September from his father’s rectory at Tarporley in Cheshire, when Duncan was still posted missing and hope remained that he might yet be found among the survivors,

“He was a very great friend of mine.  So absolutely straight and upright, so thoroughly keen at any work or game, always cheerful no matter at what hour of the night or day or how rough the sea was.  He was my special assistant, and always worked with me.  As you probably know, he was the senior midshipman, and as I was the officer in charge of them I had much to do there, and could not have done without him.  He will be a great loss to the service, and was bound to have done well.  I only hope that he may still be alive to do so now”

On 2 October, with Duncan’s death confirmed and after appearing before the inquiry at Chatham, Lt Hughes set off for Newcastle to talk to the parents.  Major Stubbs recorded in his diary:

“He spoke so nicely of Duncan and found some difficulty in speaking sometimes.  He said Duncan was extraordinarily quick and capable, able to pick up things in a day or less that an ordinary person would take a week over, he was known and liked by all the men and was quite capable of managing his battery of 12 p[ounde]r guns entirely by himself.  Hughes could leave him alone in charge of the battery and at the foretop, Duncan’s station, knowing the work would be done properly.  He said it was impossible for Duncan to tell a lie and that he was a long way the most capable of the midshipmen.  Duncan had never mentioned to Hughes that he had passed out top from Osborne and Hughes did not know it until I told him, but D had often talked about us and Nunthorpe to him.  Duncan and the gunner Mr Shrubsall were great friends and took the watch together, Hughes wanted to change Duncan’s watch for some reason but Mr Shrubsall would not hear of it, he liked to hear Duncan talk at night and would not have any other midshipman with him.  Hughes said that when he was in his hammock he could hear the two talking on watch and Duncan’s laugh could be heard all over the ship.  Duncan had been perfectly happy at sea the whole time, was never sick and always cheerful, the night before the disaster Hughes had spent a long time with Duncan and said he was in splendid spirits”

Duncan & Gunner Shrubsall

It was from Lt Hughes that Duncan and Madge at last learned something of the movements of HMS Aboukir and Duncan’s part in them:

“Ever since the War began these cruisers had been engaged in patrolling the North Sea off the German coast preventing mine laying the only time when they were withdrawn for a few days the Germans came out and laid mines.  Also they had taken marines to Ostend when fighting was expected there, Duncan begging Hughes to let him go with the landing party”  

Lt Hughes wrote a few days later from the Royal Naval Barracks at Devonport to Gerald Cochrane,

“He was always so cheerful.  Everyone who had anything to do with him liked him.  I know the men did.  He had charge of one of the 12 pdr: batteries & took charge of it splendidly.  He drilled the guns’ crews before he had been more than a few days on board, – they were nearly all reservists – men of 30 to 40.  He had the knack of taking charge.  As he told me one day, “the men didn’t seem to take much notice of what he told them, but he didn’t want to ‘run them in’ as they always did it.”   

We had some very rough weather a few days before the disaster, but he was not the least seasick, though I admit I was pretty bad.  He was the senior midshipman and as such took charge of the remainder splendidly.  I was in charge of them all, but left it nearly all to him.  I have never met anyone so quick at picking up anything.  He seldom wanted telling twice.  He made great friends with the Gunner – an excellent man – and they used to keep watch together at night on the guns manned for defence against torpedo attack.  I used to sleep in a hammock close alongside and I shall never forget his hearty laugh (which was usually the last thing I heard before I went to sleep & the first thing I heard when I woke) at the Gunner’s rather tall yarns.”

Later he told Cochrane:

“As senior midshipman, and as there was no sublieutenant in the gunroom, I frequently had to call on him in matters concerning the discipline of the gunroom, which he said, made him feel rather like a policeman.  I asked him what the others thought about it and he said “That doesn’t matter; I can punch all their heads except Gore Browne, and he and I get on all right.”  He started a “temperance league” as he called it, which meant refraining from throwing food, etc, about the gunroom, and really the Gunroom was remarkably well behaved as gunrooms go”

With Lt Hughes’ help and through the letters and telegrams that flew between the midshipmen’s mothers, Duncan and Madge began to piece together some idea of the sequence of events.  It had been a scene of terrible confusion and it took some time for details to emerge.  

The Aboukir was hit by a torpedo fired by a German submarine at 6.20 am on the morning of Tuesday 22 September.  Duncan, the senior midshipman, went below to wake Midshipman Herbert Riley, who had slept through the explosion.  Riley (who did not survive the disaster) told Lt Hughes this himself, when they were in a boat together.  “It required some pluck to do that, with the ship heeling over and liable to go at any moment,” commented Hughes.  

The Aboukir’s midshipmen then went into the water and swam for the Hogue; she herself was hit and went under at 7.05 am.  Before they reached her, Duncan and Midshipman Kit Wykeham-Musgrave had together tried to save a drowning marine.  

Duncan’s parents learned of this from Kit’s mother.  She described their attempt to keep the man afloat and their success in reaching the Cressy shortly before she too was hit at 7.30 am.  Mrs Wykeham-Musgrave’s letter does not survive, but is paraphrased by Major Stubbs in a letter written on 17 October to Gerald Cochrane:

Duncan & her boy after leaving the Aboukir swam towards the Hogue but before they reached her they saw a drowning marine they got hold of him & held him up for a long time, telling him how to help himself by floating, the marine could not swim, but they could not keep him afloat any longer & he was drowned.  They then swam towards the Hogue but she sank before they reached her so they got to the Cressy where they had cocoa & were sitting together on the quarter deck when the Cressy was struck the second time.  They both went into the sea again & after that Musgrave never saw Duncan again.

Later, Kit seems to have given a fuller account of events, in which he described Duncan’s death; it must have been hard for the boy to speak of the deaths of his friends.  

Duncan was last seen clinging to an oar with his close friend Geoffrey Gore-Browne.  They took the oar to the aid of a drowning man, but his desperate grip took all three of them under the water and they were lost.  

The disaster happened so early in the War that, although it came as a terrible, dismaying shock, early enthusiasm and patriotic idealism remained untouched.  This can be seen in Lt Hughes’ second letter to Gerald Cochrane, who was by then trying to join the Army (“I hope you will have no difficulty in getting to the front”, Hughes wrote).  Of Duncan, Hughes said,

“What a glorious death & what a hero the boy was.  Dying hardly seems to matter if one can die like that.  It makes me feel quite ashamed of myself, to think of him risking his life 3 times in as many hours to save others.”

In Newcastle, Tuesday 22 September had passed very pleasantly:

“we were all so jolly and happy, little did we think that our dear Duncan had that morning given his

T D H Stubbs

life for his country”

wrote Major Stubbs in his diary.  At about 5 o’clock he went to the house where his wife and daughter were staying, intending to take them out for a walk.  As he entered the gate he saw Mr Bell, the owner of the house, with a newspaper in his hand:

“he was very white and looked much distressed when he saw me.  I guessed in a moment, he asked me to go into the house and then asked the name of the ship our boy was on.  I told him.  He shewed me the paper in which the stop press news stated in a couple of lines that the Aboukir had been struck by a torpedo.  Nothing further.  I wired the Admiralty for news and he very kindly took the telegram.”  

Major Stubbs then went out in the hope of discovering more information before telling his wife.  He found another newspaper which carried an official report that the three vessels had been struck and that lists of the saved – “a considerable number” – would be published as soon as possible.  

As he waited in the camp for more details to come through, Mr Bell came to tell him that Madge had received a telegram from her sister asking whether they had news of the Aboukir; he went to her immediately.  Meanwhile, in the chaos, their nine-year-old daughter had picked up the newspaper and learned of the fate of her brother’s ship for herself.  

“That night”, wrote Major Stubbs

“I wired Mrs Wilson the mother of one of the other boys asking if she had news and stayed that night at St Georges Terrace.  Neither of us slept and the suspense was too terrible, Mrs Wilson wired about 1.30 am to say she had no news yet.”

The next day they heard by telegram from the Admiralty that Duncan was not among the saved.  

Major Stubbs’ diary entry for the following day begins,

“Another terrible day.  I don’t know how we got through it.  Many letters from friends but awful.”

Their younger son Hugh had by then started at his public school, Sherborne.  The news of his brother’s death was broken to him by his housemaster.  It took the man two attempts; on his first, he was unable to bring himself to do it.

Letters of sympathy were pouring in; the family received more than a hundred within the first five days.  A memorial service was arranged for Friday 2 October at St Cuthbert’s, Ormesby, where the family worshipped.  “The church was full of people,” wrote Major Stubbs,  

“Everyone loved our little Duncan and they are very touched at his death.  Neither the choir nor bellringers would accept payment so I thanked them all, Metcalfe the leader of the ringers said, ‘That is the very least we could do Sir’”  

Major Stubbs soon learned that bodies were washing up on the Dutch coast and he approached the Dutch authorities.  On the 6 October, General Snijders, Commander in Chief of the Dutch armed forces, wrote to his officers saying that he had been asked to cooperate in the search for the body of Cadet Duncan Stubbs so that it might be returned to his family.  He described Duncan as a slight boy of fifteen, blond, with delicate features and blue eyes.  

We know from Major Stubbs’ diary of one result of this appeal.  On Wednesday 14 October he was sent details by the British Vice Consul at Ymuiden of the body of a boy of about seventeen, together with a photograph.  He could not identify the face but thought the hands were similar to Duncan’s.  He telegraphed the Vice Consul asking him to look for identification marks “especially the teeth and to take a cast if possible”, but the boy was not Duncan.  

A recent discovery among papers relating to the town council of Heemskerk reveals that they thought that a beachcomber in their employ had found Duncan’s body on 12 November, but it is not known whether an identification was made.  As far as the family was concerned, Duncan’s body was never found.

In mid-October Major Stubbs heard that Duncan’s sea chest was still at Chatham and would be sent home.  He wrote to Gerald Cochrane, who was a near neighbour, and who was of great assistance to the family at this time,

“I wonder if you could possibly take it in, it is a big thing but there may be things in it which should be kept, it is probably locked & the key will be lost with the ship but I believe they are all numbered & probably a duplicate key can be obtained.  The chest could of course be taken to our house & put in his bedroom, when I could see it next time I am over probably this would be the best & it is very big & heavy – I want to keep it though, he was so proud of it.” 

The chest has not survived the years, but its contents included Duncan's lettercase, in which were found the letters that he had received on his birthday.

Duncan Stubbs

Duncan was commemorated by his friends and family on a brass plaque in Ormesby church and, together with his cousin 2nd Lieut. Jock Richardson who died a few months later, on a plaque in Guisborough parish church.  His name is inscribed on the Nunthorpe War Memorial and on the memorial erected by Coatham Grammar School.

In the years that followed, the family’s grief was embodied in a sadly lasting form in the lifelong depression that afflicted Duncan’s mother.  In the 1920s she was admitted on at least two occasions for treatment in an institution, and her bitter distress was manifested until her death in 1958 in difficult and often unkind behaviour towards her family and those nearest to her.  

Aftermath

When Henk van der Linden appealed in the Navy News for contact from the families of men of HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, I replied on behalf of my family to tell him of Duncan’s life and of the diary entries made by Major Stubbs during those terrible weeks.  By a curious coincidence, Henk at this point had received only two other replies, and one was from the family of Gunner William Shrubsall, whose name appeared in Major Stubbs’ diary.  This was all the more striking because on the publication of the Dutch edition of his book Henk had recieved a letter enclosing the request from General Snijders to his officers regarding the body of Cadet Duncan Stubbs.

We were very moved to learn from Henk that the site of the wrecks had become a vital ecological resource, a nature reserve for marine life.  We were honoured and delighted to be present at the launch of the English edition of his book on 22 September 2012 and at the centennial commemoration of the disaster in Chatham and The Hague.  We were frankly amazed to find ourselves part of the film made by Klaudie Bartelink and her team.

We had never forgotten the blight caused by the loss of a boy so loved and full of promise, but at the book launch in 2012 we met families on whom the disaster had brought the extra burden of dire financial need, with emotional and economic consequences to a man’s widow and children that cascaded down the generations.  The implications of the lasting social dislocation caused by war was brought home to us fully for the first time; I know that realisation was shared by others there, historians and families.  The ability to share stories with the other families in 2012, the pleasure of meeting the family of Gunner Shrubsall, and the moving experience of meeting the family of Otto Weddigen in 2014 have left a lasting imprint on our minds.

At the book launch at Chatham in 2012, Duncan Barrigan, great-grandson of Duncan Stubbs’ brother Hugh, was fired with enthusiasm by the presentations by divers Klaudie Bartelink and Robert Witham.  On 4 August 2013, with Klaudie and her team of diver-filmmakers, he dived the wreck of the ships that his great-great-uncle had known, in the North Sea waters where little Duncan Stubbs had died nearly a hundred years before. 

Related blog posts

There are quite a few posts on this blog that relate to young Duncan Stubbs, so I have rounded up a few of them here:

The loss of HMS Aboukir, Hogue & Cressy
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 23 September 1914
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 27 September 1914
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 1 October 1914
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 2 October 1914
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 5 October 1914
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 14 October 1914
Major Duncan Stubbs' diary entry for 16 October 1914
The wrecks of HMS Aboukir, Hogue & Cressy
Nunthorpe-in-Cleveland War Memorial - this includes the Order of Service for the unveiling of the memorial in 1921

War Horse - Major Stubbs' horse Jess

Klaudie Bartelink's documentary

A Boroughbridge Boyhood in the 1850s - this begins a series of posts on John Duncan Stubbs' grandfather, John Richard Stubbs
Days of plenty in Redcar - a middle class household before the First World War - these are recollections of meals at her grandparents' house, recorded by Katharine Isobel Ellis Stubbs, but it begins with her vivid memory of the beginning of the War
Nunthorpe in the early 20th century
War begins - Nunthorpe, 1914
The Live Bait Squadron 1914: survivors from Whitby
The War Memorial to the 50th (Northumbrian) Division

Women's Institute Drama in the 1930s and 1950s

I have posted previously on the Nunthorpe Women's Institute Drama Group – here, here, here and here.  (I should add that this is Nunthorpe near Middlesbrough, to avoid any confusion).

I've just come across some press cuttings relating to the group, which might be of interest.

Unfortunately, they're not dated!

There is a 1930s clipping relating to the performance of Nine till Six – which featured in the programme shown here and starred Mrs Hedley, Mrs H Stubbs, Mrs Baker, Mrs Steel, Mrs Ballingall and Mrs Borrow – which says

Nunthorpe produced A. and P. Stuart's Nine till Six, revealing a real sense of the stage, with a poise seldom shown by amateurs.  The adjudicator said she had nothing but praise for the performance.  Each of the characters held the balance, so that real unity was achieved, and there was a gratifying absence of over-acting or exaggeration.

 Another 1930s clipping from the W.I. Drama Festival is headlined "Adjudicator praises Nunthorpe Team", and begins

Nunthorpe team was praised for the ease and spontaneity of its acting by the adjudicator, Mr Jack Charlton, of London, at the non-competitive Women's Institute inter-county drama festival in the Rowntree Theatre, York, on Saturday.  They presented Symphony in Illusion, and Mr Charlton said that by bringing their imagination to bear, they had made effective a play that was an attempt to be clever, but that did not quite come off. 

Two other Yorkshire teams, Escrick and Ingleby Arncliffe, took part.  Escrick gave The Thrice Promised Bride, which, Mr Charlton pointed out, required an extremely difficult technique.  He praised the settings, costumes and acting, but said it would have been improved had the mime been as firmly handled as the words.  Ingleby Arncliffe performed Michael. 

West Auckland, who produced the first scene from King Lear, were criticised for their choice, the adjudicator remarking, "Of all the scenes in the whole of Shakespeare's plays I cannot imagine any that needs the heavier music of the male voice more than this one,"

 Another clipping (a very grainy newspaper photograph, I'm afraid) from the 1930s:-

Caption:  Members of Nunthorpe Women's Institute in a scene from Martha and Mary, a New Testament play which they presented in St Mary's Church, Nunthorpe, yesterday.  On stage are Muriel Ballingall (as Martha), Olga Matthams (Mary), Lesley Hownam (Sara) and Molly Stubbs (Ruth).

The full newspaper caption for the 1939 photograph shown below is

Nunthorpe W.I. members in Paolo and Francesca, which they presented in the Yorkshire Federation of Women's Institute's drama competitions which concluded at York on Saturday.

Nunthorpe W.I. members in Paolo and Francesca 1939

and underneath the photograph Molly Stubbs has written

Drama Cup for Yorkshire won by us for 3rd time 1939

M. Stubbs as Paolo with E. Cameron as Francesca & E. Whinney as Giovanni

Another cutting (with a grainy photo) is captioned 'Rehearsing for the Festival'.  It looks as though it dates from the post-War period, 1940s or early 1950s:-

Kathleen Belas (as Sister Paul), A. Blake (Patsy), Mahoney Crossthwaite (Sister Gabriella), and Molly Stubbs (Sister Annunciata) in a rehearsal scene from Time Out of Joint, which Nunthorpe Players willl present at the British Drama League (Teesside area) annual festival of one-act plays, starting in St John's Hall, Middlesbrough, tomorrow and continuing for the rest of the week. 

This cutting from the 1950s is captioned

Nunthorpe W.I. in a scene from There's Rue For You, presented at the Yorkshire Federation of Women's Institute's drama festival at York on Saturday

and I find that we have a good photograph of it in an old family album, but I'm afraid I have no names to attach.  There's Rue For You was a one-act play by Margaret Turner, published in 1950.

Nunthorpe Women's Institute Drama Group
in 'There's Rue For You'

New Close Farm, Hutton Rudby in 1806

York Herald, 8 March 1806

CLEVELAND

TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION 

On TUESDAY the FIRST day of April next, at THOMAS SMITH'S, the GOLDEN LION, Stokesley, in the county of York, at FOUR o'clock in the afternoon 

A VALUABLE and DESIRABLE FREEHOLD ESTATE, situate at HUTTON RUDBY, in Cleveland, in the county of York, at an easy distance from Cleveland Port, the Town and Port of Stockton on Tees, the Market Towns of Northallerton, Thirsk, Stokesley, and Yarm; late the residence of Mr JAMES APPLETON, and now in the occupation of THOMAS KELSEY, consisting of a genteel, modern, well-built DWELLING-HOUSE, with convenient and extensive Barns, Stables, and Outoffices, all in most excellent repair, and ONE HUNDRED and FORTY-TWO Acres, by estimation, of valuable Arable, Meadow, and Pasture LAND; the whole forming a most desirable residence for a Gentleman Farmer. 

For particulars apply to Mr JAMES APPLETON, of Nunthorpe, near Stokesley, or of Mr WARDELL, Attorney, Guisbrough*.

March 6, 1806

New Close Farm, which is still a Valuable and Desirable residence but no longer a working farm, as it has only 20 acres, lies south of Hutton Rudby, off Black Horse Lane.

*Not so much a typo as one of the variant spelling of Guisborough during the C19

The Live Bait Squadron - film by Klaudie Bartelink

I didn't put this on earlier, I was hiding from it because a younger version of me features in it ...

It's Klaudie Bartelink's beautiful and moving documentary film on the Live Bait Squadron, the British cruisers that were sunk by one German U-Boat on 22 September 1914 with the loss of 1,459 men and boys.  It was premiered at Chatham for the centenary of the disaster.

But now, having effectively retired from research and nearly recovered from the process of downsizing to a smaller house, here it is:

https://www.dutchmaritimeproductions.com/portfolio-item/live-bait-squadron/

The beauty of the wrecks is breathtaking.

Unfortunately, they are under constant threaten from salvage operations.

UPDATE: The wrecks have now been designated as War Graves.  The families of the dead and the divers & historians who have been working to achieve this for several years are naturally delighted.

24 September 2024:  The link to the film was previously out of date; I have replaced it with a valid link

Days of plenty in Redcar: a middle class household before the First World War

In old age, Mrs Katharine Isobel Ellis Hill (1905-2005) looked back to the golden times before the First World War broke out ... when she lived with her parents and her brothers in the little hamlet then called Nunthorpe Station, and they went to visit her father's parents in Coatham ...

Her memory of the end of those happy times was very vivid and painful:

King's Head, Newton-under-Roseberry

On Aug 4th 1914 my godmother had a picnic for the young people staying with her & about 12 of us walked 3 miles across the fields, climbed Roseberry, had tea at the King's Head & walked 3 miles back.  

As I ran across the last field & the others went away I crossed the road & saw my father in his Territorial Uniform (khaki) vanish round a bend on his motor bike – I called after him but he did not hear – 

I rushed into the house & asked why? & someone said, 

"There's a war with Germany, so be a good girl."   

I never see that corner of the road without seeing my father on his way to Ypres & the Somme.  7 weeks later Duncan was dead; our house was closed for the duration & I was parted from all my little friends, pets, the garden (& all sense of security forever) & the servants who were old friends.

Katharine's brother, Duncan Stubbs

(Her father's account of the day is here and an account of the death of her brother Duncan is here.)

But to return to life before the War ... 

Katharine looked back across the decades to meals at her grandparents' house, 7 Trafalgar Terrace, Coatham.

7 Trafalgar Terrace, Coatham, in 1904

Her grandfather John Richard Stubbs, had grown up with the open hospitality of his mother and her neighbours in Boroughbridge.

Her grandmother Ellis Macfarlane grew up on the west coast of Scotland, in Helensburgh.  Her father Duncan Macfarlane was a Canada merchant; her mother Mary (also a Macfarlane) was the "lovely little girl" mentioned in Three Nights in Perthshire; with the description of the Festival of a 'Scotch Hairst Kirn' (1821).

This little book, several times reprinted, recounts the author's visit to Mary's childhood home – Ledard, "a large, beautiful farm-house" near the head of Loch Ard.

Mary's father, Donald Macfarlane, had himself taken the great Sir Walter Scott to inspect the nearby waterfall, which Scott described to great dramatic effect in Waverley and Rob Roy.

(Sir Walter hasn't been in fashion in England for many years – this post on Louis Stott's literary blog will put you in the picture).

The book describes the harvest festivities, with plentiful accounts of the food and drink:

sweet and ewe milk cheese, some of the delicious trout for which the neighbouring lochs are famous, basons of curds, with bowls of sour and sweet cream, and piles of crispy oatcakes, together with rolls and butter. 

So we can imagine that, with that sort of family background, food played a significant part in John and Ellis Stubbs' daily life.

The loss of HMS Aboukir, Hogue & Cressy

Major T D H Stubbs was stationed in Newcastle with his Battery, with his family in lodgings in Jesmond.

From his diary:

Tuesday 22nd September 1914

I had been out with the Battery on the moor, and I wrote several postcards, one to my mother another to Lucas I remember, in both of which I told how our little Duncan had been getting on.  Madge, Hugh, Peggy, Katharine came on to the moor while we were drilling, it was a lovely day and we were all so jolly and happy, little did we think that our dear Duncan had that morning given his life for his country when the Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were torpedoed in the North Sea off Holland. 

I went down to 84 St Georges Square about 5pm to take Madge and Katharine out for a walk, as I entered the gate Mr Bell, the owner of the house, had a newspaper in his hand which he shewed to Mrs Grieg, he was very white and looked much distressed when he saw me.  I guessed in a moment, he asked me to go into the house and then asked the name of the ship our boy was on.  I told him.  He shewed me the paper in which the stop press news stated in a couple of lines that the Aboukir had been struck by a torpedo.  Nothing further.  I wired the Admiralty for news and he very kindly took the telegram.  I then went out having left Madge writing a letter without telling her until I could get more certain news. 

I met Grieg and we got another paper which published an official report that the three vessels had been struck and that a considerable number had been saved and lists would be published as soon as possible.  We arranged not to tell Madge anything about it for the moment and to keep newspapers from her.  I returned to camp and waited for news.  While in the Mess tent Mr Bell came to say that Madge had received a telegram from Averil asking whether we had news and consequently she knew that the Aboukir was lost.  I immediately returned to St Georges Terrace to be with her. 

I wired Mrs Wilson the mother of one of the other boys asking if she had news and stayed that night at St Georges Terrace.  Neither of us slept and the suspense was too terrible, Mrs Wilson wired about 1.30 am to say she had no news yet.

Madge was his wife.  Hugh and Katharine were his children, aged thirteen and nine.  Peggy Richardson of Guisborough was the eighteen-year-old daughter of Madge's sister Averil.  Lucas was a fellow solicitor in the firm of Lucas, Hutchinson & Meek.

HMS Aboukir was hit by a torpedo fired by the U9 submarine under the command of Otto Weddigen at 6.20 am on 22 September 1914.  HMS Hogue was hit at 6.55am and HMS Cressy at 7.20am.

Duncan was fifteen years old.  He was senior midshipman on board HMS Aboukir and when the ship began to sink he went below to rouse another midshipman who had not been awakened by the explosion.  He and the other boys swam from the Aboukir and while in the water he and Midshipman Kit Wykeham-Musgrave tried to save a drowning marine, holding him up for a considerable time.  They reached the Cressy and got on board.  They were swaddled in blankets and drinking cocoa when she was hit.  They took to the water again.  Duncan was a strong swimmer.  He was last seen with another boy taking the oar to which they were clinging to go to the help of a seaman who was beginning to sink.  They were drawn under with the drowning man.
 
The loss of the cruisers is being remembered today at the Historic Dockyard Chatham.  Of the men and boys who lost their lives 1,264 were from the Chatham Port Division.

When the Last Post is played by buglers of the Royal Marines 1,459 poppy petals will fall, each petal commemorating a life lost.

For more, see the website of the Live Bait Squadron

The Nunthorpe W.I. Drama Group in action

Here they are performing Paolo & Francesca in 1939:

I wonder if they were performing the 1902 play by Stephen Phillips.