Currant affairs...

she says. “He was in the ARP, and they were in one side of the building and the Queen’s Nurses were in the other.”

She’s right. The Queen’s Nurses – a forerunner of the NHS – had occupied the building since 1896 when it ceased to be a private residence.

It was built in about 1800 by the Robson family of Quaker botanistswho,indistant days, used the waters of the nearby Skerne intheir linenbusiness.

Therefore, where the ARP members are sitting is the scene of one of Memories favourite Darlington stories.

We’ll post it in full on the Memories blog, but in a nutshell, or in a gooseberry’s case, it goes like this… Stephen Robson (1741-1779) was out collecting botanical specimens in Richmond one day when he came across a bush he had never seen before. So, being one of the leading botanists of his generation, he dug it up, took it home, and planted it in his garden in Northgate.

His cousin Edward (1763- 1813) inherited Stephen’s collection of plants as well as his property. Edward became famous for his study of the native plants of Durham and North Yorkshire, which led him to identify his Uncle Stephen’s bizarre bush.Itwas, he decided, the downy redcurrant, ribes spicatum, which only grows in south Durham and North Yorkshire.

To commemorate this great breakthrough in redcurrant recognition, after Edward died in 1813, a family of North American gooseberries – Robsonia – was named in his honour.

The herbariums – dried, pressed flower collections – of Stephen and Edward Robson were once of national importance. Stephen was the first botanist to use common English names for plants rather than those long unwieldy Latin names.The herbariums ended up in Sunderland Museum, but when last Memories checked a couple of years ago, no one was able to lay their hands on them. Which is sad. The Memories blog also contains a re-run ofthe history of the property in the Darlington district which, judging by the number oftimes we are asked about it, intrigues everyone who drives past it on the A67.

WE were searching for information about Billy Drysdale in Memories 105. He was a flamboyant performerwith Bishop Auckland Amateur Operatic Society and many other musical groups across Durham.

“He was also a popular member of DurhamDramatic Society appearing in leading roles in many productions.

During theSecondWorldWar, whenmilitary service permitted, he also appeared in Margaret Marshall’s company of players which toured all over the northern region performing in concerts and plays, sometimes acting on proper stages and, at other times, just using table tops as a stage,” says John Foster, in Langley Park.

“His forte was comedy and he delighted in roles such as Benny inThe Desert Song and although he was then in middle age, he achieved an ambition when he was invited to take the lead in the Durham production of Brandon Thomas’ play Charley’s Aunt.” Billy died aged 88 in 1999.

His obituary in The Northern Echo said that he was one of eight children born in Middlesbrough, but he moved to Bishop at the age of six when his father got work in the post office. Billy himself started in the rates office in Bishop town left an indelible impression on Bishop Auckland. He was a great man of the church.

Amateur operatics and dramatics were his life, and he had a great talent.”

G RAHAM PENNYFEATHER emails the above picture from Chelmsford in Essex. It was taken in the 1940s, after the end of the Second World War, and shows fans of Leyton Orient Football Club including, at the front on the right, his mother, who turned 80 earlier this year.

On the rear is a stamp saying it was taken by The Northern Echo.

“Was it taken at the Darlington football ground?” asks Graham. “What year?

What was the score? Who played?”

When the Football League re-started after the war in August 1946,the bottomdivision – Division Three – was split into north and south sections.

Therefore, the clubs did not meet in a league fixture until 1966 when, briefly, they were in the same division.

The only time that the two clubs played each other in this era was in the second round of the FA Cup on December 11, 1948, at Feethams, when this picture must have been taken.

The crowd was 12,736 – 1,500 above that season’s average attendance – and Mrs Pennyfeather saw her team lose 1-0, the only goal of the game coming from Quakers’ midfielder Alf Milner.

A couple of months later, he was transferred to Hartlepools United.

H ERE’S a lovely line from Alan Carter, 72, a lifelong resident of Wheatley Hill. Memories 104 was illustrated by that fabulous picture of the welldressed Durham miners relaxing with their leeks in their allotment beside their terraced houses.

The terraces were built on a slope behind Front Street, and rather than names, the terraces were known by numbers.

“We would never say that so-and-so lived in the numbered streets,” says Alan. “It was always that they lived in the Dardanelles.”

There was a narrow alleyway thatled fromthe Nimmo Hotel, in Front Street, and one day – probably in the First WorldWar – someone referred to it as “the Dardanelles”.

The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles are narrow, winding straits of water that run through Turkey and connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

They are the divide between Europe and Asia, and, so, strategically important. Much blood has been shed over their ownership, including during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War.

Wikipedia also adds: “The Dardanelles is considered one of themost hazardous, crowded, difficult and potentially dangerous waterways in the world.”

Is that what the alleyway beside the hotel was once like?