Paying a heavy price

HUTTON MAGNA is a little place on which the First World War had a big impact. One hundred years ago, it and its neighbour, West Layton, comprised 55 houses. Even in those overcrowded days, the population of the two villages cannot have been more than a few hundred.

Yet 34 men went to war, and 12 of them – all from Hutton Magna – did not return.

The Hind family suffered the most grievously, losing three brothers.

Next weekend their niece, Marian Lewis, is giving an illustrated talk in the village hall about them, and all of the local men who went to fight.

Hutton Magna is almost midway between Barnard Castle and Richmond on the south side of the Tees.

Bertie Hind

Sometimes it is in North Yorkshire, although at the moment it is in Durham.

Its position close to the Roman road – now the A66 – that crossed the Pennines must have been crucial to its existence, particularly after Christmas 1773 when the London to Carlisle stagecoach started galloping along it.

In 1856, a more modern type of transport – the railway – came close to Hutton Magna with the opening of the line from Darlington to Barnard Castle. Winston was its closest station.

Ten years later, the railway crept closer still, with a mineral line running to quarries at Forcett about four miles away. In January 1914, there was serious talk of extending the line to Hutton Magna itself.

But all that talk was silenced by the war.

Among the 34 that went to fight were brothers Bertie, John and Gilbert Hind.

Bertie, a farm worker, was the first to die, in April 1917, near the France-Belgium border. He was 26 and left a widow, a son, and a sixweek- old daughter, Edna, that he had never seen.

Later that year, Gilbert, a 19-yearold chauffeur for Stubb House, near Winston, was injured serving with the Northumberland Fusiliers in the Western Front trenches, and he died in a Staffordshire Army hospital in January 1918. His body was returned by train to Winston station, loaded onto a cart and pulled by a horse to Hutton Magna where, with a full military funeral, he was buried in the churchyard.

And then John, a Shoeing Smith Corporal in the Royal Field Artillery, died on the Somme on October 17, 1918, after he contracted pneumonia on top of his injuries. He was 32, and left a wife and a son.

John Hind

“My grandmother took it very hard,” says Marian.

“She had had 11 children – one died as a baby, another died when he was nine, and then, in 1908 when she was 45, she became a widow when her husband had an accident with a horse, and died.

“That left her with nine children to bring up, and she lost three of them in the war.”

It could have been more. Matt, a teenager, was passed fit for military service but then was called back by the doctor. “Your family has suffered plenty, so I’m rejecting you as unfit,” said the doctor, and Matt returned to the land.

Most villages remembered their dead by erecting a stone monument.

Hutton Magna decided to raise £800 for a wooden lychgate to go at the entrance to the churchyard.

It was built by Robert “Mouseman”

Thompson, of Kilburn, although it is one of his few works that doesn’t have a mouse on it.

The gate was unveiled on April 19, 1921, amid great ceremony.

Carved on one of the rich panels is the inscription: “This lychgate is erected to commemorate the men of this parish who, at the call of king and country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of sight of men by the path of duty and selfsacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom.”

Then come the names of the men who will featured in Marian’s talk: George Barry, Charles Butler, Leeming Clark, James Jackson, Charles Patrick, Wilfred Jackson, John Stockdale and Thomas Thompson, plus Lieutenant Robert Close, the son of the village vicar who led the dedication service.

Gilbert Hind

The Darlington and Stockton Times concludes its report of the service: “Many floral tributes from relatives and friends of the fallen were placed near the tablet after the unveiling. Hutton indeed has reason to be proud of her share in the Fight for Freedom.” STARING from the poster promoting today’s anniversary exhibition in Sedgefield, Bertie Bateman looks frighteningly young. He looks slight and freshfaced.

With his cane under his arm, his hair just cut, and his boots highly polished, he looks as smart as a carrot.

If his uniform were another colour but khaki, he could be a young man preparing for his first day at big school, with all his hopes ahead of him.

But, of course, Bertie is preparing for war.

The son of a hay-dealer, he grew up in 7 East Parade, Sedgefield, just round the corner from the Dun Cow, where Tony Blair once took George Bush for fish and chips.

He must have enlisted at Ferryhill before his 17th birthday because when war broke out 100 years ago, he was stationed at Stockton and then Hartlepool where he was employed in coastal defence.

In September 1914, he and the Yorkshire Regiment were sent for training at Ravensworth Park in Gateshead, before being mobilised.

He landed in Boulogne in August 1915, just as he was turning 18.

He lasted a surprisingly long time, because he wasn’t killed until the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1916 – shortly after his 19th birthday.

He was one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Battle of the Somme, and his body was never recovered.

His name, therefore, is among the 72,195 on the Thiepval monument to the missing of the Somme.

Six other Sedgefield men are on the monument, including William Smith, who was killed on July 1, 1916, which was the first day of the battle – he was one of 188 Smiths on Thiepval who died during that dreadful 24 hours. The figures are staggering.

Sedgefield has its own, more humble, memorial, which bears the names of 42 men who lost their lives during the Great War.

Bertie Bateman, of Sedgefield, who is one of six Sedgefield men to have his name on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

They will all be remembered in today’s exhibition, at Ceddesfeld Hall, which includes photographs, memories, documents and artefacts donated by many Sedgefield people.

Norma Neal, chairwoman of the local history society, which has organised the exhibition, said: “It pays tribute to the valour and sacrifice of Sedgefield people 100 years ago, those who returned and those left behind on the battlefields of Europe and beyond.”

Sadly, young Bertie was just one of many.

NEXT weekend is the Patronal Festival at St Mary Magdalene Church in Trimdon, which is extra special this year because St William’s Catholic church in Trimdon is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

Both churches are open for the curious to have look round next Saturday, from 10am until 4pm, with local historian Adam Luke offering guided tours of St Mary Magdalene (call 01429-882041 to book).

Some of the displays on the day will be about the 199 men from the Trimdons who gave their lives during the Great War.

There is just one war grave in Trimdon, in East Cemetery, but, out of the 199 fatalities, it is proving to be the most difficult story to research.

It belongs to Corporal W Berry, of the 7th Battalion, Welsh Regiment, who died, aged 29, on July 28, 1918.

He was the son of Tobias and Mary Berry – with a name like that, you would have thought that researching his story would be a piece of cake... But that’s all we know.

Cpl W Berry is the only First World War soldier buried in Trimdon

It looks as if the 7th Battalion was a cyclist company which was stationed in the North-East on coastal defence duties.

If anyone has any information about either Cpl Berry or the 7th Battalion, we’d love to hear it.