Vicar sidelined, and loses his piano, in spectacular village feud

As well as three pubs, it had a parish hall and a reading room – but, as a new booklet tells, there was a bitter divide between the vicar and at least some of his parishioners.

A late Victorian postcard showing the Shoulder of Mutton pub on the Great North Road in Barton

This divide led to one of those fantastic fall-outs that can be such an entertaining feature of village life, and it resulted in the people of Barton building the largest village hall for miles around which drove the vicar’s expensive parish hall to close.

Barton’s first village reading room was established in 1860 in Piper Hill. In 1876, a "great tea-meeting" was held in a tent on the village green and people came bearing books to restock the room.

The terrace at Piper Hill in 1951, shortly before it was demolished, although the entrance to the central property was left standing. This has been called "the smallest free-standing dovecote in the country". The first reading room was in Piper Hill

After the initial burst of enthusiasm, the room fell into decline. Chairs and tables were vandalised, and even the clock had its innards removed.

When the quarries went into production in 1898, the room was re-established. "It was furnished with the relics of the last one, namely three chairs with no backs, a bookcase and some books, a table, two spittoons and a clock without works," wrote Edward Lyall, the managing director of the quarry, whose booklet describing the strange events of 120 years ago has just been republished.

The quarrymen of Barton cramped in their first reading room in Piper Hill

The revamped reading room was a success. "The number of members increased so that they were enabled to buy new chairs and one or more extra spittoons," said Mr Lyall.

Indeed, it was so successful that the quarrymen began complaining that "chair space was not only limited, but the atmosphere often grew thick and heavy with tobacco smoke". They wanted more – they wanted room for a billiard table and perhaps even a venue for a Friday night dance.

Their desire coincided with an idea by the Barton Lord of the Manor, Sir Henry Spencer Moreton Havelock Allan (above) of Blackwell Grange on the outskirts of Darlington, to form a rifle club. He came from a famously militaristic family, and felt that if every village trained its men in the ways of rifles, the country would have a readymade militia should one ever be needed.

In a village the size of Barton, the logical home for all these amenities was in the parish hall which belonged to the vicar, the Reverend Ferdinand Frederich Rudolph Meier Downie (the new booklet explains that he was a Tynesider who was named after his uncle, a Prussian shipbroker). The vicar, known as Rudolph, had bought a flour mill near the ford in the centre of the village in 1899 for £200 and converted it into a parish hall.

It was ideal for everyone’s purposes: it had a largely unused ground floor that was easily convertible into a reading room, and there was space out the back for a rifle range.

In January 1907, Sir Henry chaired a meeting in the school to see if a way forward could be found, The D&S Times headlined its lengthy report: "Lively meeting at Barton. The vicar and the Parish Hall".

Mr Downie told the meeting that "he would be very glad indeed" to lend his hall "absolutely free, gratis and for nothing", although he would want to appoint the committee that ran the hall, and he would want something back for his £200.

One of the quarrymen, Thomas Pounder, called out: "It should not be called the Parish Hall because it is not under the control of the parish. The parish has nothing to do with it. It is the Parson's Hall. (Laughter and applause.)"

(The D&S in those days liked to include stage directions in brackets in its reports.)

"The vicar replied: Call it a Parish Hall or the Parson's Hall if you like, I can only say where politics or religion have been connected with it in any way everybody has been treated alike.

"A voice: All except the Liberals.

"Another voice: Hear, hear.

"At this point there was a slight hubbub…"

The vicar’s politics appears to have caused him to fall out with more than just the Liberals of Barton – the Sunday school had left his parish hall and moved into the normal school.

Mr Pounder's voice rose loudest above the hubbub.

"He replied: Then I myself, speaking for the quarrymen, say we don't want it, and we will not have it at any price. (Applause.)

“The Vicar: Then I only hope you will find the means of building your institute.

"Mr Pounder: We will do the best we can.

"The Chairman (Sir Henry): We are exceedingly grateful for your offer, Mr Downie.

"The Vicar: I don't think so."

The women of Barton who raised money to build the institute by organising a sewing committee and bazaar committee

The meeting resolved to set up a committee under Sir Henry's chairmanship to build a brand new institute with £100 donated by Sir Henry on a quarter of acre of land given by Sir Henry.

This only widened the divide. On April 20, 1907, the D&ST carried a report headlined "The revival of Barton". It told how with 150 men now employed in the quarry, Barton was losing its dependency on agriculture and how Sir Henry had saved the day when the quarrymen had told him they wanted "some place where they might meet free from religious and political strife".

Just five days after the article appeared, the reverend Rudolph held a formal opening of his parish hall – even though it had been open for eight years. He called it the Barton Parish Hall and Institute and invited Lord George Dundas to perform the belated opening.

Barton in 1908, looking over the beck, with the vicar's parish hall on the left, to Sir Henry's newly-built institute at the centre left

Lord George was the son of the Marquis of Zetland of Aske Hall, near Richmond, a Conservative statesman, but the vicar said: "The Institute, in spite of what has been said, is absolutely non-political and unsectarian."

However, he made it plain that he would still not allow Friday night dances in his hall because he believed "his Church made it plain to him that Friday was a fast day and not one to be selected for lively secular entertainment".

Not that the vicar was against all music, and he noted a little sadly that "the piano, which had been given three years ago, was required back by the donor…and he would be glad indeed to send for a piano if anyone had a spare one".

It appears that the D&S article about thriving Barton was timed to scupper the vicar’s reopening, and it appears that the vicar’s renaming of his institute was designed to scupper the opening of the new institute which was headed by Sir Henry, who in 1910 became the Liberal MP for Bishop Auckland.

Barton Institute under construction in 1908

Practically all the village rallied around Sir Henry’s institute, with quarrymen, farmers and their womenfolk coming together to raise £800 – Sir Henry even wrangled a £5 subscription out of the Liberal Minister of War, Richard Haldane, to assist with the rifle range.

Barton was 'gay with bunting' on the opening day on May 2, 1908, of its second village institute

Sir Henry opened the two-storey institute on May 2, 1908. “With a neat and cheerful appearance outside and a cheerful interior, it seems destined to become the centre of social and recreative – and educational – life of the village,” said The Northern Echo.

Sir Henry, who handed the running of the institute over to a committee of villagers, said he "felt that Barton was a village populous, progressive and important enough to have an institution belonging to, and controlled by, nobody except the members".

He added: "We have no quarrel with anybody in the village."

The first thing the committee did was grant themselves a licence to hold Friday night dances that went on until 4am.

With two billiard tables upstairs, a lecture hall-cum-dancehall downstairs, and a rifle range and quoits pitch outside, the new institute had everything a quarryman or farmer could want.

It even had a piano.

On opening day, the Echo printed a list of the names of 208 donors to the institute. Of those, 207 are recorded as just having given money, whereas Hugh Rowlandson, of Newton Morrell, is listed as having donated “£10 10s and piano”. Could that be the same piano that the vicar had had taken away from his parish hall, and was it pushed noisily up the village green to the new institute?

Hugh Rowlandson of Newton Morrell, who gave a piano

Barton might have been populous and progressive, but it wasn't big enough for two institutes.

In 1920, the vicar’s parish hall was sold to Croft Rural District Council which pulled it down for housing – bungalows called Brookside now stand on its site.

The institute, of course, thrives, and last year Richmond MP Rishi Sunak opened its new kitchen (above). Edward Lyall’s booklet from 1908 has been edited and added to by Helen Robinson, and, full of pictures, it is now for sale in the village shop for £5 or by emailing bartonvillageinstitutemc@g.mail.com. All proceeds go to the institute.

Pictures courtesy of the Darlington Centre for Local Studies