Showing posts with label Stockton-on-Tees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stockton-on-Tees. Show all posts

Saturday 25 June 2022

Heart Echoes in late Victorian Stockton-on-Tees

A few keepsakes from late Victorian Stockton-on-Tees.  They belonged to Miss Eleanor Bateson of 37 Skinner Street.  

Skinner Street, Stockton-on-Tees
(running vertically down centre of picture)
O.S. 1913 National Library of Scotland

 Eleanor was born on 21 November 1866 to John and Mary Bateson, the fourth child of a family of six.  

Her father was a cordwainer when she was born – not a cobbler who repaired shoes, but a man who made shoes from new leather – but when she was a little girl he became firstly a foreman in a local ironworks and then a school warden for Stockton, responsible for enforcing school attendance by calling on parents and visiting schools.  It was quite an onerous position.

These keepsakes and chance survivals of a long life date from Eleanor's twenties and early thirties.

To begin with the Christmas season – 


Eleanor kept two particularly attractive Christmas cards.  One of them shows a spray of ivy and the message "A Happy Christmas".  Folded, it measures 3 inches by 2 inches, and it opens out to reveal a quotation from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 and a verse by Thackeray.  

 

We might not think the verses very Christmassy but they send wishes for "Good Health and Good Fortune" to an absent friend.

The second card is rather larger, measuring when folded 5 inches by 3 inches.  "With Louie's love to Nellie" is written on the reverse.  The picture shows strawberries and strawberry leaves together with a little scene of a house by the sea.  "Good Wishes" is the message on the front.




Inside is a verse by Helen Marion Burnside (1841-1923), an artist and  writer of lyrics and verses.  The verse inside this card begins 

Happy Christmas to you.
Best of earthly blessings
Fall on you to-day


A collection of small, brightly-coloured paper scraps shows that Eleanor kept a scrapbook.  

These are all that remain of the sheets of embossed relief images and die-cuts that she bought to fill her pages – but we don't have her scrapbook, so we can't see how she arranged them and what sort of artistic effects she achieved.


The next memento shows that Eleanor was a singer.  

The Programme for the Long Newton Cricket Club Annual Concert is simply dated Tuesday May 20th.  The year isn't given, but 20 May fell on a Tuesday in 1890 and in 1902.  I rather think the concert might have taken place in 1890.  Quite a few of the pieces date from the 1880s and listening to fairly new songs would have been part of the attraction.  

We don't know if Eleanor was in an ensemble that sang for the Long Newton Cricket Club's fundraiser or if she was involved in the Club itself.  And was the Mr Bateson on the programme her father or her brother?  We don't know.  Perhaps it was both of them, one of them giving a rendition of the music hall comic monologue 'The Penny Bus'  and the other singing the romantic ballad 'In Old Madrid'  (which you can listen to in a 1920 recording here).


Eleanor appears four times in the programme.  She opened the concert in a quartet singing 'O Who will o'er the Downs so free?'   and followed it up with 'Love's Old Sweet Song', which we might remember better as 'Just a Song at Twilight'.  She opened the second half with 'Needles and Pins', which I suspect must have been a comic song, and then she sang in a duet.  And both halves of the programme ended with a glee sung by all the company. 

Besides music, Eleanor also loved poetry.  In the late 1880s she bought a dark red, hardback exercise book measuring 7 inches by 9 inches – it was her Poetry Book.

The first poem she transcribed into her book was "Newly Wedded" by Lizzie Berry.  This probably came from a recently published book called Heart Echoes: Original Miscellaneous & Devotional Poems, which came out in 1886 and is available in a reprint today.  Lizzie Berry came, her publishers explained in their foreword, of a humble background and had suffered "great trials and difficulties".  Her verses were often printed in the newspapers and she came to have a devoted following.  


But Eleanor also liked older verse and classics such as Shelley, Cowper, Thomas Moore and Longfellow.  And she read novels – she had been reading A Romance of Two Worlds by Marie Corelli.  Newly published in 1886, it was Marie Corelli's first book and an immediate popular success – and the beginning of a highly colourful career.  Eleanor was clearly taken by it and she transcribed verses from the novel into her poetry book.  

She didn't confine herself to poetry.  When she saw something that amused her, she copied it out.  Some of us will remember Avoirdupois Weight – which usually went like this

16 oz (ounces) = 1 lb (pound)
14 lb = 1 stone
28 lb = 1 qtr (quarter)
4 qtrs = 1 cwt (hundredweight)

In 1895, when Eleanor was 29 years old, she was taken with a gently humorous, sentimental version:

Avoirdupois Weight
(New Code) 1895

16 Looks make 1 Smile
16 Smiles make 1 Nod
28 Nods make 1 Moonlight meeting
4 Moonlight meetings make 1 Kiss
20 Kisses make 1 Wedding

One of the quotations on the same page reads, "A true man is generous and unselfish and has a conscience."


The notebook is far from full – Eleanor only filled a dozen or so pages.  The last poem of all was part of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'A Psalm of Life' (1838), which begins
Tell me not, in mournful numbers 
Life is but an empty dream!
Eleanor transcribed verses 6 and 9:
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
In 1901 Eleanor was living at 37 Skinner Street with her parents, her brother Malcolm and a young lodger, who was a grocer.  She was working as a clerk in a tea warehouse.  

The Square, Stockton-on-Tees
O.S. 1913 National Library of Scotland
I expect the tea warehouse stood at 29 The Square (where the library stands today) and belonged to William Thomas Trattles.  In the late summer of 1906, as she approached her 40th birthday, Eleanor married him.

A year after the marriage, Eleanor gave birth to her only child, Mary, born on 31 October 1907.  It was Mary who kept her mother's poetry book and the other little keepsakes, a small collection surviving by chance from a family's accumulated mementos.

Mary was only 14 when her father died, so she must only have had a child's remembrance of him.  He must have been a man of determination, energy and business acumen; he was certainly someone who knew personal tragedy.

William Thomas Trattles was 11 years older than Eleanor, a widower with 5 children – the youngest was 11 and the oldest was 21.

He was born in 1855 in Staithes, the son of a master mariner.  For many years – for all of Mary's lifetime – a picture of the sailing ship Zephyr had pride of place above the fireplace.  The Zephyr was built in 1845, master John Trattles, owner Thomas Trattles, her destined voyage was Hamburg and she was rigged as a snow.  (And you can examine her survey on the Lloyd's Register Foundation Archive here).  When John Trattles retired from the sea, he was for some time a grocer in Staithes.  Perhaps this was perhaps the impetus for his sons Matthew and William to go into the tea trade.  

In 1880 they were in business together as Trattles Brothers, tea and coffee merchants of 29 The Square.  But the partnership only lasted 3 years and they split up in 1883.  They must have agreed that William could keep on the warehouse at 29 The Square because he carried on there as a tea wholesaler.

William built up the business, advertising heavily to tea dealers in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough – one of his selling points was that he was the "Sole packer of the celebrated Sultan Packet Tea".  He prospered, diversifying into Fancy Goods, Glass and China.  His December advertisement for 1891 proclaimed 
Christmas and New Year Presents – the largest and best assortment in the district at W T Trattles, 29 The Square, Stockton.  Dinner Sets, Chamber Sets, Toilet Sets, Tea Sets of endless variety to choose from, and all at wholesale prices
He tried branch shops for a while – the shop in Middlesbrough was on the "main thoroughfare" but it didn't work out and he put it up for sale in 1892 ("would suit a lady").  The shop in Darlington lasted longer.  He advertised it for sale in 1903 
To be disposed of, an old-established Present, Tea and Fancy Goods Business, in Darlington; satisfactory reasons for disposal; managed by a female.  
Meanwhile, he and his wife Agnes Jemima Wilson and their growing family progressed from 24 Balaclava Street, in the network of terraced streets near the railway station, to 13 Palmerston Street – where they had a live-in servant – to Park House on Richmond Road, next to Ropner Park.  It was a villa with "12 large, spacious rooms, with all conveniences, large garden and grass lawn; adjoining Park; very best position".

And it was there, on 29 May 1895, only three weeks after giving birth to her sixth child, that Agnes died at the age of 40.  William was left a widower with five children – their first baby, Agnes, had died within weeks of her birth.  Ida was the eldest at 13, and after Ida came Hugh Harold, William Horace (always called Horace), Agnes and the new baby Thomas. 

William picked up his life and carried on.  He had his business, he was a town councillor, and he employed a housekeeper.  The children were growing up and Hugh Harold started work as a Chartered Accountant's clerk.  Then disaster struck.

On 8 April 1902 a fire at the shop and warehouse in the The Square gutted the building and destroyed a great deal of the stock.  A few months later, on 26 July, his beloved daughter Ida died at Park House.  I'm not sure if his heart was in the business after this, or perhaps he no longer had the drive to rebuild the business.  At any rate, by the time of the next census in 1911 he was no longer an employer, but was working as a Commercial Traveller for China goods. 

When the First World War broke out, little Mary was nearly 7 years old.  Her eldest brother Hugh Harold was 29, living in Beckenham and working as a bank clerk.  He joined the 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers as a private.  Horace had been living at home in 1911 and working as a drapers' assistant.  When war broke out he joined the 14th Battalion London Regiment as a Private.  Thomas was a merchant seaman.  He joined the Yorkshire Regiment in December 1915 when he was 20.  Their sister Agnes was 23 years old.  I think it was probably during the War that she trained as a nurse, the career she followed for the rest of her life.

William Horace Trattles
(1890-1917)
Mary adored her brother Horace, he was her favourite brother.  In June 1915 he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the 13th Battalion Hampshire Regiment.  In the spring of 1916 he was attached to the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment and sent out to Mesopotomia.  He was killed in action on 25 January 1917 at the age of 26.  He is buried in the Amara War Cemetery in south-east Iraq.

Mary had prayed for him fervently every night; she never believed in God again.

By the time of Horace's death, Hugh had been wounded twice and was back in the trenches, and Thomas had been in hospital for 6 months.  

He had been sent out to France towards the end of April 1916 but was wounded within weeks.  The damage – I think he was left with epilepsy – that was caused by the gunshot wounds to his head on 12 July 1916 incapacitated him from work for life.

Hugh Harold Trattles died in 1920 at the Phillips Memorial Hospital in Bromley, Kent, aged 35.  His father William Thomas died the following year at the age of 66.

So only Mary, her mother and her brother Thomas were left in Stockton.  They lived at Rosebank, a house with 5 bedrooms and 3 reception rooms on Cranbourne Terrace, where the family had moved in 1915.  

Rosebank stood on a large plot and its garden stretched back to the railway line – which meant it was naturally called into use when the centenary of the Stockton to Darlington Railway was celebrated on of 2 July 1925. 

Cranbourne Terrace, Stockton-on-Tees
O.S. 1913 National Library of Scotland

A grandstand was built at the bottom of the garden for dignitaries and notables to watch the grand Railway Centenary Procession of locomotives going by.  

Locomotives of all types and ages, passengers and crew in period dress, the Darlington Band playing from one of the rear wagons, a tableaux train carrying a pageant illustrating the evolution of the wheel in transport, luxury trains – the Flying Scotsman carrying excited children – and in pride of place a replica of Locomotion No 1, led by a horseman flourishing a red flag to warn of its approach.  It was an enormous success and you can see newsreel footage of it on youtube today herehere and here.

Mary Trattles

Eleanor, Mary and Thomas lived at Rosebank for about 20 years.  Mary, it is said, was engaged to be married but she had her mother and brother to care for, and the engagement was ended.  

By the time the Second World War broke out they had moved to Stirling House, 98 Darlington Road, Hartburn.  Eleanor died there in 1952.  

Mary lived on there until her death in 1998, long outliving her brother Thomas and sister Agnes.  She was the last of the family.

Her most vivid memory to the end was her beloved brother Horace carrying her piggy-back as he raced round the garden, her mother calling anxiously all the while, "Be careful!  Be careful!  You'll drop her!"





Saturday 1 May 2021

7. The Siege of York & Battle of Marston Moor: 1644

 Mrs Wandesford could now turn her mind to her sons' education.  

She need have no worries for her eldest, George.  He was happy and safe in France completing his education with Mr George Anderson, an excellent man and a wise scholar.  (He was also a Scot who was zealous for the Church of England, which must explain why he was an expatriate).  But fifteen-year-old Christopher was causing her a great deal of concern.  He was still suffering terribly from the fit of the spleen – the depression – that had gripped him since his father's funeral.  His torments, Alice remembered, were dreadful to witness.  Mrs Wandesford had exhausted every possible cure and the family's tender care had been unavailing.  But now she could send him to the famous physician Dr John Bathurst, who was in York. 

Dr John Bathurst (1607-59)

So in November 1643, Christopher was sent to York, where he was successfully treated by Dr Bathurst and where he could go to school.  At the same time, his younger brother John began to attend the Grammar School at Bedale.  Life looked very promising.

Unfortunately – 

On 15 September 1643 the King and the Irish rebels had signed a one year truce.  The King could now transfer troops from Ireland to England.  Not only that – he was planning to send Irish Catholic forces to Scotland to join with Royalists there.  But the very idea of Catholic forces was anathema to many in Scotland and England.  The Parliamentarians were now looking at defeat so they came together against their common enemy with the Scottish Covenanters.  On 25 September they signed their agreement – it was called the Solemn League and Covenant.  It was a military alliance and a religious pact.  The Covenanters intended England to have the same form of religion as the Scots.

On 19 January 1644, the Army of the Covenant under Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven marched into England.  On 28 January, the Scottish advance guard was at Morpeth.  The garrison at Newcastle was inadequate – the Marquess of Newcastle led his men out of York to reinforce it, reaching there on 2 February with only hours to spare before the Scots arrived.

Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven (1581-1661)
For two months the armies manoeuvred against each other in Northumberland and County Durham, but on 12 April the Royalists were forced to evacuate Durham and Lumley Castle.  The Marquess of Newcastle aimed to make a stand at Piercebridge.

During the winter months, Mrs Wandesford had been considering her plans.  Friends advised her to move to York, where both Christopher and John could get an excellent education – and the prospect of a social life must have appealed to her, for herself and for Alice.  She had made up her mind to the plan, packed up her goods and they were on their way when they met with a messenger from a friend, Thomas Danby of South Cave.  He had sent them urgent word that they must turn back because York would soon be under siege.  This must have been just after 11 April, when Parliamentary forces had stormed and taken Selby and York was laid open to attack.  One of the commanders, Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton Hall in the West Riding, wrote to a friend, 

The blow has made us Masters of the Field in Yorkshire, God grant we may maintain it; and then nothing can hinder us to Teese-side.

So Mrs Wandesford turned back.  She and her two children went to Kirklington, where the Revd Robert Dagget took them into his home until the Hall could be ready for their occupation.  But sixteen-year-old Christopher was in York.

When the Marquess of Newcastle heard of the loss of Selby, he had to leave Piercebridge and march south to reinforce York.  The Scots were coming south behind him.  On 14 April, they occupied Darlington.  The next day they were at Northallerton, where one Royalist regiment resisted them – a forlorn hope.  

The Marquess of Newcastle reached York on 18 April.  The city's Roman and mediaeval walls had been repaired and strengthened in 1642 and an outer ring of earthworks and forts built beyond the walls.  Cannon were mounted on Bootham Bar, Walmgate Bar, Monkgate Bar and Micklegate Bar, and on the castle itself.  The garrison was well provisioned and fully manned.  

On 22 April, the Army of Both Kingdoms – the Parliamentarians and and their Scottish allies – was at York.  The formidable city was now besieged and Christopher Wandesford was inside the walls.

York Castle in 1644

Notes

Dr John Bathurst was the founder of the Bathurst family fortunes.  They owned lead mines in Arkengarthdale and held the manor of Skutterskelfe for a hundred years from about 1659.  The Bathurst Charity is still active in Hutton Rudby.

Alice puts the Battle of Marston Moor as happening on the same day as they were turned back by the message from Mr Thomas Danby, but it's clear from the context that this was not the case. 

George Wandesford & the Battle of Marston Moor: July 1644

On 1 July 1644, the King's gifted young nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine outwitted the Allied generals and raised the York siege.  The Allies had concentrated their troops on Marston Moor and Hessay Moor, the uncultivated common land to the west of York between Long Marston and Tockwith.  

Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82)

On 2 July at nine in the morning they learned that the Prince's army was approaching them.

There were now five armies at York.  On the Royalist side, there were the 18,000 men of the armies of the Prince and of the Marquess of Newcastle.  On the Allied side, there were 28,000 men made up of Lord Leven's Army of the Covenant, Lord Fairfax's Northern Association and the Earl of Manchester's Eastern Association.  Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell with his regiment of Ironsides formed part of the Eastern Association.  The coming battle – the Battle of Marston Moor – was to be the largest ever fought on English soil.

It was at this moment that 20 year old George Wandesworth arrived on the scene.

George had been obliged to come back from France, hoping to gather some funds from his Yorkshire estates because there was no income coming out of Ireland.  He had been to see his uncle Sir Edward Osborne at Kiveton, which lies about 10 miles east of Sheffield, and was now on his way home.  He and his uncle will have assumed that his best route would lie between Wetherby, which the Allies had taken some months ago, and the besiegers around York.  But Prince Rupert's rapid approach and the manoeuvres of the armies confounded his plans and he found himself among troops preparing for battle – and uncomfortably close to straggling parties of Allied soldiers.  He was glad to come upon his cousin Colonel Edmund Norton's troop of dragoons.  

When he realised what was going to happen, he decided he must go back into York and find his brother Christopher – and in the second lucky coincidence of his day he met young Kit riding out of the town with some other boys.  They were naively going off to see the battle.  A fine brotherly exchange must have taken place before George took his brother up behind him and set off home.  

And then his luck ran out.  He had been seen and recognised in the company of his cousin Edmund Norton and his behaviour was thought suspicious.  A party of Scots horse set off after them.  It was near midnight when George came at last to Kirklington.  He made his way quietly to the gate of the Hall by a back way, not wanting to attract notice by going through the village.  It must have created quite a stir in the household when he and Kit appeared.  

Behind them on Marston Moor, the Allies attacked at half past seven in the evening just as a thunderstorm broke and the Royalists had decided there would be no battle.  It was all over in two hours.  Thomas Danby of South Cave died that day, Alice said, shot to death with a cannon bullet, cut off by the midst of his body as he sat his horse.  The last stand was that of the Marquess of Newcastle's own Northerners, his Northumbrian Whitecoats, who refused quarter and died where they stood.  

Over 4,000 Royalists were dead, and about 300 Allies.  The Allied victory, won for them by Oliver Cromwell's cavalry, had not been inevitable but it was complete.  Two weeks later, the city of York surrendered.  The defeated Royalists were able, under the terms of the surrender, to march out with their arms and colours, on their way to Richmond and Carlisle – but they didn't all get there, because most of the men quickly deserted.   The gates of Micklegate Bar were opened and the victorious Allied armies came into York.   Its churches and the stained glass of the Minster were preserved from pillage and destruction by order of the Allied commanders who now held York for Parliament, the Yorkshiremen Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas Fairfax.  

Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-71)

This was the end of Royalist control of the North and the beginning of Oliver Cromwell's reputation as a military commander.  The Marquess of Newcastle left for Holland – his fortune had been spent in the King's course and he was unable, he said, to endure the laughter of the court.  Prince Rupert and the remaining Northern cavalry rode out of York on 4 July to Richmond and from there to Lancashire.  

On the coast, the strategically important Mulgrave Castle had been seized by the Royalists in 1642 – now Parliament retook it and used it as a prison.  At Stockton-on-Tees, which the King had been allowed to keep in his agreement with the Scots when they occupied County Durham, the castle's poorly paid and supplied garrison surrendered to the Scots without a fight on 24 July 1644.   

Some 25 miles to the north of York, Helmsley Castle was still held for the King.  In September it was besieged by Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax himself, who defeated an attempt at rescue by Royalist forces from Knaresborough.  In November, the food ran out and the Royalist commander negotiated a surrender.  He was allowed to march his men off to join the forces holding Scarborough, while Sir Thomas ordered the castle at Helmsley to be slighted – the curtain walls and the east tower were broken down so that the ruin could not be garrisoned again.  Knaresborough castle itself surrendered after a six month siege – like Helmsley and Mulgrave castles, it too was slighted by Parliament.  Stockton castle was destroyed.  Sir Thomas Fairfax was badly wounded at Helmsley by a musket ball that broke his shoulder, but the Royalists who hoped that he would die of his injuries were to be disappointed.  His forces moved on to besiege Scarborough and its castle.  That was to be a long and bloody business.

Helmsley Castle.  [By Barkmatter CC BY-SA 3.0]

More than sixty miles to the north, the city of Newcastle had been holding out against the Scots, the North's old enemy, since they crossed the border.  After York fell, Newcastle had no chance – there was no possibility of a relief force.  In October, the western part of the walls were broken down by artillery bombardment and mines and the Scottish Covenanters fought their way into the city, the Royalist forces retreating into the Castle Keep.  One of the Scots described the horrors – the desperate courage on both sides, the thundering cannons roaring, the thousands of musket balls flying, the clangour and carvings of swords, the pushing of pike, the wailing of women, the carcasses of men like dead dogs in the streets.  The situation was hopeless and the Royalists surrendered.  

The Scots now controlled the Tyne and they had always been able to use the port of Sunderland on the River Wear – the men who ran Sunderland were Puritans and hostile to the King, and Sunderland had been on the side of the Covenanters from the beginning.

Next: 8. Mrs Wandesford moves to Hipswell: 1644-1645 

Saturday 3 April 2021

William Weldon Carter & Eden Lodge, Hutton Rudby

In Spring 1880, this advertisement appeared repeatedly in the Yorkshire newspapers:

The Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 15 April 1880 
Desirable Country Residence 
To be sold, and may be entered upon immediately, EDEN VILLA, within eight miles of Stockton, near Hutton Rudby, and one mile from the Potto Station on the Whitby Railway.  The House is most favourably situated, commanding magnificent views of the Cleveland Hills, and in the midst of a fertile country. 
The House contains Drawing and Dining Rooms, Front and Back Kitchen, Scullery, Larder, Wash-house, Cellar, &c., and five good Bedrooms and W.C.  The Outbuildings consist of two Coach-houses, 2-Stall Stable, Cow-byre, etc. 
There is Hard and Soft Water on the premises. 
The premises are well and substantially built, and are in first-class order; they stand upon one-and-a-half acres of Land, well stocked with Shrubs, Ornamental and Fruit Trees.  There is also eight-and-a-half acres of rich Pasture Land adjoining the House, making in all ten acres of splendid Land. 
Applications to be sent in to the owner, William W. Carter, Eden Villa, Hutton Rudby, Yarm.  Further particulars may be obtained from 
EUGENE E. CLEPHAN,
Architect and Surveyor,
Stockton-on-Tees.
March 16th, 1880.
Eden Villa was the house built by William Surtees when he came back from Australia in 1868 with his son, the only survivor of his first marriage, and his Australian wife and their little girls.  He built them a house in the fields beyond the edge of the village and he called it Eden Cottage after his grandmother Eden Dodds.  

He was a stone mason by trade and now he established himself as a builder and contractor.  But he had more adventurous plans.  First he set up the Albion Steam Crushing and Cutting Mills in Middlesbrough and then he bought land at the corner of Doctors Lane and began work on his new project – the Albion Sailcloth Works, equipped with a horizontal steam engine driving six looms.  And then, before the Works had really begun, he died in 1877 aged 53.  His widow sold up and took her children back home to her family in New South Wales.  (The whole story is to be found in Hutton Rudby 1876 to 1877: the Albion Sailcloth Mill)

I always wondered when Eden Lodge, as it is now called, took on its present appearance.  It seems to me that William Surtees' Eden Cottage must have been a modest building because he needed his money for his business ventures.  

The advertisement from the spring of 1880 reveals the answer.  William Surtees very probably had outbuildings for his tools and equipment but I suspect he was far too busy a man to have time to stock an orchard and put in shrubs.  The hard and cold water may well have been his work – a well drawing hard water from an aquifer and a rainwater collection system for the soft, ideal for washing.  

It was William Carter who must have enlarged the house, perhaps converting the outbuildings into coach-houses and stables.  He bought more land and, with the assistance (I would guess) of the architect Eugene E Clephan, he created an idyllic miniature country estate.  In fact, in his brief ownership he had gentrified Eden Cottage.

The story of William Weldon Carter, to give him his full name, is one of steady success and sudden failure in the retail trade and of the parting of the ways between brothers.  It's also the story of a long-running Stockton drapery firm, which must have been very frequently visited by people from Hutton Rudby; there were close ties between town and village.

In 1841, two brothers called William Weldon and George Richardson Weldon from Beverley were doing well as drapers in Stockton-on-Tees.  Living with them on the shop premises, as was usual at the time, were two assistant drapers and three apprentices.  Business may have been getting on well, but William and George evidently were not – in the spring of 1842 they ended their partnership and each struck out on his own.  William's business was now William Weldon & Co at 32 High Street [1]

By 1850 William had shops in both Stockton and Middlesbrough and had taken his sister's son William Weldon Carter into partnership with him.  William Weldon Carter was still a very young man, born in Hull in 1827 to Margaret Weldon and Richard Carter, a commercial traveller.  His younger brother Thomas Vincent Carter had joined him by the spring of 1851 and they lived with their uncle, three shopmen, an apprentice and three servants at Todds Buildings, which seems to have been on Yarm Lane.  It was a thriving concern.

Meanwhile, George Richardson Weldon was in a much quieter way of trade at 62 High Street.  Eventually he retired from business to farm 40 acres on Oxbridge Lane.  

But William Weldon's partnership with his nephew William was not long lasting – it ended in July 1852.  It looks as though young William, on his travels for his uncle's business, had fallen for a girl and on 7 August 1852 he and Elizabeth Whistler were married in London.  She was the daughter of a draper, which was perhaps how he had met her.  (In the marriage register, he described his own father as a gentleman).  It seems he had ended the partnership with his uncle in order to emigrate.

The young couple went to Australia – as did William Surtees and his wife half a dozen years later – but, just as for William Surtees, their voyage ended in tragedy.  Elizabeth died in Collingwood, Victoria on 10 March 1853 after only seven months of married life.  

By 1861 William Weldon was doing very well.  William Weldon & Co had expanded into the four buildings of numbers 30 to 33 High Street and William had pulled them down and replaced them with a single four-storey building.  He no longer lived at the shop but in great style in West End House on Yarm Lane, in the fields outside Stockton [2].  The house was set well back from the road in its own grounds and the entrance to the drive was flanked by two gate lodges.  His pleasant and quiet nephew Tom [3] was still living with him and working alongside him.  His nephew William, who had returned from Australia a few years earlier and had been married since 1858 to Mary Ellen Ellison, was running the Middlesbrough branch in East Street.  (Middlesbrough began as a town on the north side of the railway line and that was where the middle classes then lived.)  William and his wife lived on the premises with seven staff, both male and female, aged between 14 and 40.

At around this time William Weldon took both his nephews into partnership with him and the firm became William Weldon, Carter & Co.

And then William Weldon Carter's luck took a downturn again when he fell ill.  In February 1863 William Weldon instructed a Manchester accountant to dispose of the "stock-in-trade, fixtures and goodwill of his branch drapery concern".  Such a sale in the booming new town of Middlesbrough was expected to have a broad appeal and this advertisement appeared in the Liverpool press: 
Liverpool Mail, 28 February 1863 
... The shop is large, modern and well lighted, having been built expressly for the business, and occupies the first situation in the town.  The trade is a first class and profitable one, and the returns average £10,000 per annum.  Present amount of Stock £3,000 or thereabouts.  A clever business man, or two active young men, who know how to buy and sell, may make a fortune in a few years.  The business at Middlesbro has hitherto been managed by the proprietor's nephew, who is unable from ill health to conduct it any longer, and hence the reason of its disposal.
It isn't clear to me whether William Weldon actually sold the business.  At any rate, William Weldon Carter and his wife and baby son returned to Stockton.  It was a busy few years for the family.  William and Tom's widowed mother Margaret died aged 59 at her brother's house and the following year it was from there that her daughters were married, Agnes Sarah to the shipbuilder George Craggs and Margaret Ann to the Bishop Auckland metal merchant Henry Kilburn.  Perhaps William Weldon found he missed the female company because at the end of 1865, he married.  He was 59 years old and his new wife Elizabeth Ann Benson was 30.

Five years later, on 24 July 1870, William Weldon retired from business to live out his retirement in comfort and dignity at West End House and William and Tom Carter became Carter Bros.  They branched out, buying an interest in Robert Gray & Co, a big drapery concern in Blyth. 

So in 1871 the younger generation was in charge.  Tom had just married and he and his new wife Jane Robinson Dickin lived at 4 Barrington Crescent.  William had bought a house at 2 West End Terrace for his family of three young children.  

Everything was looking promising.  The brothers sold their share of Robert Gray & Co back to Robert Gray, had their shop at numbers 34 to 37 High Street demolished and new premises built on the site.  In early June 1874 they celebrated with a ball for their employees.  The Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough reported on 13 June that over 500 people were present and that
The dances took place on the ground floor, and the show room was metamorphosed into a supper-room.  Dancing was kept up with great spirit till an early hour in the morning
The new buildings were heralded by an enormous advertisement in the Gazette on 3 July 1874 ("Great Extension of Business Area") and we can see the extent of the goods they sold in an advertisement in early December that year.  
Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 2 December 1874 
Carter Bros.,
Wholesale & Retail Drapers
Stockton-on-Tees
Desire careful and special attention to the undernoted Departments, which certainly contain by far the Largest, most varied and fashionable, together with the Cheapest Stock in the District of Cleveland.

They listed Costumes ("Fifty Homespun, at 29s 6d, ticketed in the town at 39s 6d"), Skirts, Jackets, Shawls, Flannels and Furnishing, which included carpets, matting, hearthrugs and paperhangings.

In the winter of 1875 they led the area in Early Closing for the winter months.  The Daily Gazette thought all the town's tradesmen could "advantageously and profitably" follow their example.  It doesn't mention the shop assistants.  These were the days of punishingly long working hours.  It wasn't until 1886 that the number of hours were restricted to 74 just for the under-18s and, with staff living on site, unpaid overtime was common.  The reduced opening hours meant that Carter Bros would close on Saturdays evenings at nine and on other weekdays at 6 o'clock.  (One early polemic against the system, Death and Disease behind the Counter, was written by the barrister Thomas Sutherst in 1884 and can be read here.  The cause of the shopworkers was later taken up by The Lancet).

And then in 1879 William and Tom's partnership came to an end.

By this time, Mrs Surtees and her little daughters had left Eden Cottage and William Weldon Carter had bought it.  Was it intended as an investment or did he intend to live comfortably in the country?  We don't know.  He still owned 2 West End Terrace and he must have spent a good deal of money on Eden Cottage to turn it into Eden Villa.  And he had plans for his future ...

Meanwhile in Stockton, it was the end of an era.  William Weldon died at home on 5 June 1880 aged 74.  The Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough reported on 8 June that
There was a large following at the funeral, most of the leading tradesmen and inhabitants of the town being present to show their respect for the memory of the deceased gentleman.  Mr Weldon was the founder of the old established firm of Weldon and Carter, drapers, now known as Carter and Co, and was generally esteemed for his strict business integrity and general uprightness. 
Over the road from the Oxbridge Lane cemetery where William was buried, his brother George now lived in one of the recently-built large houses called The Ferns.  Five years later, he too would be buried in the cemetery.

William Weldon Carter must have had high hopes for the future at the beginning of 1880.  He was living at Eden Villa, his little country paradise.  In March his son William Weldon Carter junior passed the preliminary examination of the Law Society and his proud parents had announced the fact in a notice in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough.  And then something began to go wrong with the finances.  

Eden Villa was repeatedly advertised for sale but there were no buyers.  The mortgagee lost patience and both properties were ordered to be auctioned on 30 September 1880 at the Vane Arms in Stockton.  This must have been a very unwelcome moment for William's brother Tom who was at that point renting 2 West End Terrace from his brother.  The auction notice described the house as 
a very comfortable and commodious House, and conveniently situated
while the description of Eden Villa ("a very desirable country Residence") now included a Croquet Ground.  

(The mortgagee's solicitors were Hirst & Capes in Harrogate, and if that sounds familiar to keen readers, it's because it features here in A Large family in 19th century Harrogate and in the story of John Richard Stubbs, which begins on this blog in July 2014)

This advertisement at the beginning of December shows that William's new plans were maturing: 
Sunderland Daily Echo, 3 December 1880 
New Drapery Store
212, High-Street, Sunderland
(Two minutes' walk from the Station on the right)
William Weldon Carter
Wishes the General Public to know,
without giving a Long List to read,
they will find all their requirements 
at Prices undoubtedly the Best
Value in the North
He and his family now lived comfortably at Oaks West in Sunderland, where William Weldon Carter junior, in spite of his Law Society examination success, was an apprentice draper and the two daughters had the benefit of a governess living in the household.  Eden Villa was empty; before long it would be the home of the Thorman family.

A few months later, William Weldon Carter announced the opening of a new shop selling "General Drapery Goods & Paper-Hanging" at 50 & 51 Church Street, West Hartlepool.  He advertised heavily.  It would be a cash only business, he explained in a long notice in the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 2 August 1881.  The goods would be marked at 
fixed and unalterable prices, and will be sold strictly for cash across the counter, thus saving bad debts, and deferred interest, so that cash buyers will be supplied with goods at such prices as would prove utterly ruinous to credit-giving houses.
Was this a public-spirited policy or did he need immediate payment for his cash flow?  He was hoping to "meet many of his old Stockton connection and friends" and he had an offer to make that might help poach customers who would otherwise go to his brother's business in Stockton:
Buyers from the country travelling by rail or carrier will be allowed their fare one way on purchases of one pound, and return fare on two pounds
No wonder relations between him and his brother Tom were strained.  A notice had appeared in the Hartlepool Northern Evening Mail, 22 July & Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 23 July 1881
Messrs Carter & Company, Drapers etc, Stockton-on-Tees, 
Beg to inform their Customers and the Public that they have no connection with the Carter from Sunderland who is opening Sutton's old shop at West Hartlepool.  
and directly below it was another notice
Note this – William Weldon Carter wishes the public in general to know that he has NO CONNECTION whatever with Carters' of Stockton nor has he any desire to be connected with them in any way whatever
On 20 August another advertisement appeared in the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail – William Weldon Carter would be delaying the opening of the Hartlepool shop until 27 August 
In consequence of the enormous pressure of Business in connection with his SUMMER CLEARANCE SALE now going on at Sunderland
But financial disaster was looming and it arrived all too soon:
Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 22 September 1881 
LOCAL FAILURE – William Weldon Carter, hosier, draper, and milliner, late of Hutton Rudby, North Riding, but now of 50 and 51, Church-street, West Hartlepool, and of 212, High-street West, and of The Oaks, Sunderland.  Debts, £5,000; assets not ascertained.  The solicitors are Messrs Dodds and Co., Finkle-street, Stockton.  Mr F H Colison, public accountant, Cheapside, London, has been appointed receiver
An end to all his dreams.  

In Stockton, Tom was quietly prospering.  This advertisement from c1893 shows the extent of his business, which had become Carter & Co when Carter Bros was no more


And after that ... 

William Weldon's widow Elizabeth married Dr Thomas William Fagg the year after her first husband's death.  She continued to live on at West End House while the town steadily built up around it.  She certainly lived in comfort, as can be seen from an advertisement in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough 20 October 1891 for "2 Vine Houses of Black English Grapes."  She died, again a widow, in 1914.

William Weldon Carter makes a brief reappearance in the newspaper advertisements in the first three months of 1891.  He was the manager of the Darlington Mills shop in Dovecot Street, Stockton – this was the large and well-known woollens and worsted company of the Pease family in Darlington – and so he was once more in direct competition with his brother.  After that he disappears from the record.  He died in late 1904 at the age of 79 and was buried in the Oxbridge Lane Cemetery.  His son William died in 1912 aged 49 and was also buried there.  

Tom Carter died at home at 8 West End Terrace in December 1896, leaving a widow and seven children.  In his obituary, William's role in the early years of the business is quite forgotten:
Northern Echo, 28 December 1896 
Death of a Stockton tradesman
The death took place on Saturday morning, at his residence, West End-terrace, Stockton, of Mr Thomas Vincent Carter, the founder and chief partner of the firm of Messrs Carter & Co., drapers, High-street.  The deceased gentleman took an active part in the management of the business until about three and a half years ago, when he was seized with a stroke, and since then he has been in a helpless condition and under the medical care of Dr Hind.  
Mr Carter was a native of Beverley, Yorkshire, and was about sixty-three years of age.  In 1874 he built the present extensive premises, after having carried on a smaller business adjoining for some time, having succeeded to it on the death of his uncle, Mr Weldon, and about ten years later three other gentlemen joined him in partnership.  He leaves a widow and a family of seven.  The elder of his two sons is in a large drapery establishment in London, and the younger Vincent, is in the Stockton business, which has been under the direction of Mr H G Robson, the managing partner since Mr Carter's illness.  The deceased gentleman was of a genial but quiet nature, and was highly esteemed amongst a large circle of business and private friends.
Carter & Co became D. Hill, Carter & Co Ltd after his death.  They were a presence on Stockton High Street until just before the Second World War.  Nowadays, the new buildings that the Carter brothers opened with such a fanfare in 1874 are occupied by the Enterprise Arcade:

The Enterprise Arcade is on the far left

[1]    I have drawn a great deal of information, above all on the buildings themselves, from this ECM Heritage report and this Heritage Stockton article.  Other sources: London Gazette entries relating to the partnerships; digitised newspapers.

[2]      For West End House, see photograph and comments on the the Stockton picture archive

[3]      Thomas Vincent Carter is referred to as Tom in the notice placed in the press by Robert Gray on the occasion of the Carter brothers buying a share on Gray's drapery business.  Tom's obituary in the Northern Echo, 28 Dec 1896, given at the end of this piece, describes him as "quiet".

Saturday 6 March 2021

North Yorkshire dialect – & the White Horse of Kilburn

As I said in On the Sea Cliffs of Cleveland, my last blogpost, one of William Stott Banks' great interests was Yorkshire dialect.  

He began his walks in Cleveland rather disappointed:

16 July 1864  Wakefield Free Press
Walks in Yorkshire X:  Cleveland - Upper Eskdale - over moors to Lewisham Station
A first journey anywhere is always open to doubt; but it is necessary to begin somewhere, and so we decide upon starting off with Roseberry Topping in Cleveland, that sweet green cone, from childhood believed to belong to Margery Moorpoot and associated in one's head to a broad north Yorkshire dialect supposed to be spoken by men and women with laughing mouths opening from ear to ear across great red cheeks; but, sad to say, our little-boy's dream will not come true, for these things will seem to have quite gone out if they ever were in; nobody will as a matter of course call Ayton "Canny Yatton," though many still think Roseberry "b'biggest hill i' all Yorkshur, aboon a mahle an a hawf heegh an as cawd as ice at t' top on't i' t'yattist day i' summer," which it is not; nor will any peculiarity of face be seen, nor the farmers be found in any sense to come under the denomination bumpkins.
Margery Moorpoot was a character from farce who, when asked where she came from, declared 
Ah was bred and boorn at Canny Yatton aside Roseberry Topping
and when asked where that was, replied
Ah thowght onny feeal hed knawn Roseberry. – It's biggest hill in all Yorkshire. It's aboon a mahle and a hawf heegh an' as cawd as ice t' top on't i' t' yattest day i' summer; that it is. 
And that is why William Stott Banks writes of a "little-boy's dream" and "great red cheeks".  He must have been remembering going to a theatre to see a farce played, complete with heavy stage makeup and comic country 'bumpkins'.  

Margery Moorpoot was the creation of a Stockton man, the playwright and poet Joseph Reed (1727-83).  

There is a wikipedia entry for Reed, drawing on the Dictionary of National Biography entry, and there is an account of Reed, with his own comic description of his early life, on page 85 of The Local Records of Stockton and the Neighbourhood by Thomas Richmond (1868), which can be read online here

Joseph Reed succeeded to his father's business as a ropemaker, but was always devoted to literature and in 1757 he moved his business and family to London.  In 1761 he made a great hit with 'The Register Office: a Farce' in which Margery Moorpoot, a Yorkshire servant looking for work at a register office in London, featured and which was popular for years.  In one revival, the part of a female author called Mrs Doggerell was played by the celebrated comic actor Mrs Jordan – mistress of William IV and mother of Amelia Fitzclarence, wife of 10th Viscount Falkland, whose memorial can be found in Hutton Rudby church, (see The People behind the Plaques)

The text of dialogue between Gulwell of the register office and Margery Moorpoot can be found transcribed here on Genuki.  It's from Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect (1808) *.  
Roseberry Topping – from this angle it still looks like a cone

William Stott Banks deplored the loss in Yorkshire of the old ways of speech and dialectal words.  He might not have come across anybody referring to Canny Yatton, but he did find that Snick Gate was pronounced Snek Yat, Stokesley was Stowsleh and Raindale was Raindil, and on the next walk he was reassured:

20 August 1864 Wakefield Free Press 
Walks in Yorkshire X: Bilsdale - Ryedale - Hambleton Hills 
To answer a doubt which lately arose and moreover not to overstate things, we have been under obligation of inquiring whether the striking peculiarities of dialect, not heard on our last walk, but put down in books as characterising Cleveland 30 or 40 years ago, have ceased to the extent supposed; and it may be said, so far, that while what was noticed before is generally true, there are here as all over persons whose manners and speech have not yet undergone the changes that schooling, quick travelling and more extended intercourse with other places and people are everywhere bringing about.
And in that walk he included pronunciations such as Wainstones (pronounced wean or wearn) and he reported the speech of people he met.  

At the end of the walk he reaches Gormire and the White Horse of Kilburn.  As the wikipedia article on the White Horse explains, while some say that the horse was made by the schoolmaster, his pupils and some volunteers, a tablet near the carpark gives the credit to one Thomas Taylor.  

The tablet was put in place after a restoration following a public appeal in 1925.  The Horse had been renovated after a public appeal a generation earlier:  

29 June 1896 Bradford Daily Telegraph 
The notable Yorkshire landmark, the White Horse of Kilburn ... was originally completed on the 4th of November, 1857, by the projector, Mr Thomas Taylor, a native of Kilburn and for many years a resident in London ... The projector dying something like a quarter of a century ago, the figure was neglected and got from bad to worse, and at the commencement of the year was so overgrown with weeds that it was found necessary to ask for outside aid for its renovation, or otherwise to allow it to become obliterated altogether.
In 1925 it was the Yorkshire Evening Post that raised the funds and on 15 August 1931 the newspaper proudly reported – along with an account of the money spent on the 'grooming' of the horse that year – that it was in "fine fettle" and that 
The history of the White Horse is set forth in the following inscription on the tablet which is let into the ground near the back of the statue:- 
The Kilburn 'White Horse'
This figure was cut in 1857,
on the initiative of 
Thomas Taylor,
a native of Kilburn.  In 1925
a restoration fund was subscribed
by readers of 
The Yorkshire Evening Post,
and the residue of £100 was
invested to provide for the 
Triennial 'Grooming' of the figure.
The wikipedia article quotes Morris Marples in his book White Horses and Other Hill Figures (1949 and still available secondhand from a 1980s reprint) as giving the credit to Taylor, a native of Kilburn, who was a buyer for a London provision merchant.  "He seems to have attended celebrations at Uffington White Horse in 1857, and he was inspired to give his home village a similar example."

A report in the Northern Echo of 2 July 2004 reveals that both schools of thought are right – the horse was the idea of Thomas Taylor and it was carried out by his friend, the village schoolmaster John Hodgson with the schoolchildren.  The newspaper's source was one of the Hodgson family – and he held a copy of the original drawing, with all the measurements, that Thomas Taylor sent to John Hodgson.  It had been passed down in the family over the generations and the only other copy is in the Yorkshire Museum in York.  There is a photograph of the drawing on this website.

When William Stott Banks and his walking companions came to the White Horse it was less than 10 years since it had been cut.  He begins by describing the scene.  The white mare he refers to can only mean White Mare Crag.
Just below Whitstone cliff is the lake Gormire covering about sixteen acres, and here, as in Berkshire, we have a white horse newly chalk't every year, and a white mare too.
There they encountered a Kilburn woman who lived between Whitstone Cliff and Roulston Scar, and what she told them is interesting, not only for the dialect, but also for the details she gave them of the creator of the White Horse.  
T'wite mare is under Wissuncliff an' t'wite 'orse is just a back at'bank facin t'toon o' Kilb'n.  T'wite 'orse wodn't shew itself aboon as it wod below.  It's clean'd a' brack'ns ivery year and chalk't oot.  Tommy Taylor at's gone tuv Australia 'ed it pick't oot for a memorandum not so very monny years sin; may be ten years mebbe.  Taylor wur born at Kilb'n an 'e got a taumst'n put up for all t'family livin an' deead an' put their names on, a particular sort of a man.  Ther's none on 'em left noo.  Ther's 'unerds an' thoosans comes to Gormire.  I's gawin that rawd in a minit.
I think that Thomas Taylor must be the cheesefactor (that is, he would be buying cheese from the makers to be sold in the London markets) who is to be found in the 1851 census living with his wife Ann and their six children at Kilburn Cottage, Central Hill, Lambeth.  He was born in Kilburn in about 1808 and we can see his attachment to his birthplace in the choice of a name for his house.  As to whether they all went to Australia at some point, I don't know!  In the 1861 census Thomas and Ann and two of the children were in Central Hill, Lambeth, but I know no more than that.  As to the tombstone that Thomas Taylor had made, I have no idea!

Dialects constantly change and language adapts over time and place.  There has been noticeable 'levelling' of dialects across Europe and in North Yorkshire I expect we have all noticed the slow disappearance in some areas of the old ways of speaking.  So William Stott Banks' transliteration of the people he heard as he walked in North Yorkshire in 1864 is to be treasured, and it is always a joy to listen to the old lilting speech to be heard in the voice of the late Maurice Atkinson in the videos on the Hutton Rudby and District Facebook page.

And, with words dating from long before Banks' time, the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary of historic terms from early documents (1100 to c1750) is great!