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Thomas Barlow Allinson writes a letter: 1836
Thomas Barlow Allinson's letter of 1836 was among the small collection mentioned in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830). These letters survived apparently by chance,...
View ArticleLetters of Mrs Lucy Browne of Gorleston: 1835 & 1836
Two letters in the collection that I describe in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830) are filled with news from Gorleston in Suffolk. They were written from Gorleston...
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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...
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Frightful Accident at Sleights Station: 1 August 1901
On 2 August 1901, the Whitby Gazette carried a shocking headline:Frightful Accident at Sleights StationA Whitby Lady Cut To PiecesThis is the story – two elderly ladies – and a busy railway station in...
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The Poltergeist at Moor Farm, North Yorkshire: 1940 to 1950
This is a record kept by Kay Hill of unnerving experiences in a moorland farm during and after World War II.In 1938 Kay had become – in the slang of the time – a Bolter. She had left her very...
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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...
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Wash-day drudgery gone forever!
A reminder of how much washing machines changed women's lives. This one was a small, neat, quick machine.Picture Post, October 30, 1948THE BIGGEST WASHING NEWS OF THE CENTURY!WASH-DAY DRUDGERYGONE FOR...
View ArticleThe Faceby Saints left today
It's 14 February and so it's Valentine's Day – and on this day in 1855 a party of 28 people left the little North Yorkshire hamlet of Faceby. They didn't expect to see their old homes again. They...
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All Saints, Hutton Rudby: who were the Cary family?
A short account of the Cary family, for visitors to All Saints' Church, Hutton Rudby who see the memorials on the chancel walls and wonder who these people were. It includes new material, not before...
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Lord Falkland fights a duel: 1809
This is the story behind this tablet in the chancel of Hutton Rudby church:Tablet to Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland, his wife & daughterHutton Rudby ChurchCaptain Charles Cary RN, 9th...
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Mourning in Eston: 1877
A small sheaf of receipted bills, which had survived by chance in the offices of Meek, Stubbs & Barnley, has given me the material for this sad story.It was on the afternoon of Tuesday 23 January...
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A Year's weather: 1895 by John Megginson
1895 – the year when Oscar Wilde was sent to gaol, when Middlesbrough Football Club won the FA Amateur Cup, Alfred Dreyfus was sent to Devil's Island, the future George VI was born and, in Bavaria,...
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Defective bottles at Seaton Sluice: 1835
A chance find which has turned up among my family's papers – a furious letter about defective bottles. No idea how it ended up in a solicitor's offices in Middlesbrough …On Thursday 23 July 1835, a...
View ArticleDark nights in Great Ayton: 1889
This sad little story is a reminder of village life before street lighting. We are so conscious of light pollution nowadays, we can forget the hazards of the past.That admirable woman Mrs Annabel Dott...
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Christmas recipes from Hutton Rudby, 1896
The Northern Weekly Gazette was a cheery weekly newspaper with editions published in Middlesbrough, Guisborough, South Bank, Stockton, Darlington and West Hartlepool. Advertisements declared that"The...
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Cockfighting in Hutton Rudby & Stokesley
In 1903 Richard Blakeborough (1850-1918), celebrated collector of North Riding folklore, wrote an article for a cheery weekly family newspaper called the Northern Weekly Gazette about cockfighting in...
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New & Good Things: Alfred Hopkinson, 1930
Alfred Hopkinson (1851-1939)When Alfred Hopkinson, barrister, academic, MP and keen alpinist, wrote his memoirs in 1930, he ended one chapter with three lists. He was 80 years old and looking back...
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Carrying coal by donkey
"There are those yet in Cleveland who can remember coals being conveyed into the country across the backs of donkeys."wrote John F Blakeborough in his newspaper column on 14 May 1904. Two Hutton Rudby...
View ArticleLetters home from a travelling salesman: 1817-42
Anyone researching the life of a commercial traveller in the early 19th century may be interested in letters now deposited at North Yorkshire County Record Office. Among the papers of John Leslie...
View Article19th century solicitors in Middlesbrough, Stockton and Darlington
In the second half of the 19th century when Middlesbrough – Gladstone's "Infant Hercules"– boomed from a farmhouse to an important industrial town in the space of decades, solicitors played a...
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"That Tiresome Lady Architect": Mrs Annabel Dott
Five years ago, on Thursday 21 February 2019, I published here the first of my pieces on the redoubtable and remarkable Mrs Annabel Dott, woman architect and builder. I first came across her when I...
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Introducing John Hopkinson & Alice Dewhurst
Last year I began a new blog called 'The Engineering Hopkinsons'. Alice Dewhurst of Skipton was the daughter of John Dewhurst of the Bellevue Mill. (Readers may remember buying the familiar Dewhurst...
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Charles Dickens' elder sister Fanny
This is an article from my blog The Engineering Hopkinsons. It is set in Manchester and it's called 'Henry Burnett & Fanny Dickens at the Rusholme Road Chapel'The unaccompanied hymns at the Chapel...
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HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy
I've only just caught up (two years late) with reading this excellent book on the sinking of HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy on 22 September 1914 by a single German U-boat.Stuart Heaver's 'The Coal Black...
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The Bathurst Charity School in Hutton Rudby
The connection between Hutton Rudby and the Bathursts began in the first half of the 17th century with the founder of the family fortunes, Dr John Bathurst. Dr John Bathurst (d 1659)By the time he...
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