Chequered history of forbidden corner

It's opposite the Spotted Dog, and everybody who passes between Darlo and Barney seems to have an eye on it.

For me, though, it is a frustrating place. I first tried to get in there 20 years ago, when a pair of eccentric elderly siblings lived in the ruined stableblock without, I was told, electricity. They rebuffed my approaches, and it was so overgrown and dark and eerie down there that I wasn't that persistent.

In 2004, after they had died, "Valley House" went on the market. I asked the estate agent if I could do an article, but even though he was using my earlier scribblings as part of the promotional pack for the property, he refused to co-operate. In a fit of pique, I wrote the article below about "the forbidden corner".

When developers brought the property, it remained forbidden to me. Even though I was getting several calls a week from curious passers-by, I was asked to respect the new residents' privacy - I think there was an issue with lurcher-types rampaging through the Teesbank quarries in search of rabbits. I totally understand people's desire for privacy, although the nosey-parker in me found it frustrating.

So, like everybody else on the road from Darlo to Barney, I've watched the fine-looking new house go up and the tumbledown stableblock become visibly more tumbledown.

And now I'm still being asked about this most intriguing corner. Here's my article from 2004 that I hope answers some of the questions:

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Chequered history of forbidden corner  
The Northern Echo 25/08/2004

ONE of south Durham's most intriguing properties is on the market for approaching £1m. It is a dark, densely wooded corner that has been scoured out of stony cliffs by centuries of quarrying.

All that can be seen of it from the main road between Darlington and Barnard Castle is a pair of tall, forbidding iron gates. Indeed, access through them has been forbidden to this column, but somewhere behind them lies an overgrown fivebedroomed gardener's cottage, a tumbledown stable block and 12 acres containing an old piggery and the remains of a stately home.

This is High Coniscliffe. The gates are opposite the Spotted Dog pub. Offers over £800,000 are being sought and received.

Old maps show a tall cliff - "King's Cliff", as we discussed in late June - on which St Edwin's Church was built. All around it, agricultural lime has been quarried out, leaving some dramatic drops and views over the Tees.

The area's major manor houses are to be found at Ulnaby, Thornton and in field to the east of the A1(M) at Low Coniscliffe.

A more modest mansion was also built on the low ground beneath St Edwin's Church.

It remained modest - home to moderately prosperous Darlington merchants - until it was acquired in the early 1890s by James Westoll, a Sunderland steamship owner.

James, born in 1860 in Monkwearmouth, had a habit of naming his ships after those closest to him. His mother, Elizabeth, died in 1893 and in 1895 he launched the SS Lizzie Westoll, which was 302ft long and 45ft wide.

A couple of years later, he launched the SS Lavinia Westoll, which was named after his wife.

This ship had a chequered history. During the 1900s its crew were entombed when fire broke out, and on March 28, 1916, it struck a mine and sank 33 miles off Hull, while on a voyage to Russia.

But the steamships clearly made James plenty of money, because he started developing his estate at Coniscliffe.

He laid out the gardens and, in 1919, added two large wings to the modest mansion. He appears to have upgraded the mansion's name, from Valley House to Coniscliffe Hall.

James and Lavinia's three children - Vera, James and Dorothy - grew up in the hall.

During the First World War the Westolls put up many Belgian refugees there, and when James died, in 1930, Lavinia stayed in the hall until the outbreak of the Second World War. She then moved to a smaller house in the village and the Army requisitioned the hall.

This was the beginning of the end for the Westolls and the hall in Coniscliffe.

The Westolls' children moved away. James went to Cumbria, and Vera, the eldest, followed her husband to London.

She had married John Scott Hindley in St Edwin's Church, in the social event of 1909. He become a director of the Bank of England and the first chairman of the National Coal Board upon nationalisation in 1946. He was created Viscount Hyndley in 1948 and died in 1963.

The Army used Coniscliffe Hall as a barracks and hospital.

A couple of small fires were followed by a very large blaze in the central section in 1945, and the Army left the place utterly uninhabitable. It was allowed to fall down, and now its walls are less than a foot high.

The estate then became the property of the rather eccentric Loxley children, two sisters and a brother, whose father had been the local vicar. They lived in the former gardener's cottage, which they called Valley House.

They appeared in The Northern Echo in 1989, when Darlington Borough Council persuaded them to accept a grant of £12,600 to connect the property to an electricity supply and install an inside bathroom. It was costing the council more than £1,000 a year to empty their external earth closet.

Mary, the elder sister, died in 1986. Fielden died in 1991, having cheered up patients in Darlington Memorial Hospital the preceding Christmas because his bushy white beard made him look like Father Christmas. Jeannette died about 18 months ago.

When Fielden - who described himself as a "retired horsebreaker" - died, The Northern Echo described him as "a man who lived in 19th Century conditions".

It would seem inevitable that his highly intriguing house is about to be dragged into the modern world - for a frighteningly 21st Century price.