Remarkable stories, and pictures, from the Pease memoirs

George Pease’s first seven years were spent in Richmond in the 1920s and 1930s, although during the 19th Century, his family had controlled many of the railways, coalmines and blast furnaces of south Durham and the Tees Valley.

George Pease, the 4th Lord Gainford when a young architect in the 1950s

READ MORE: OBITUARY OF GEORGE PEASE

Swale House (below), just off Richmond Market Place, was the family home – Lewis Carroll boarded in the same house in the 1840s when it was the home of the headmaster of Richmond Grammar School.

It had a ballroom and a garden rolling down towards the river, and when George’s elder brother, Joseph, was given an O-gauge Flying Scotsman engine powered by methylated spirits, their mother banned it from the ballroom because of the damage its wheels, and its spilt burning meths, were doing to the wooden floor.

“The nursery was at the top of the house where the windows allowed views over the rooftops and street below,” George wrote in his memoirs. “There was a tobacconist opposite, with a signboard comprised of a picture of a lifebuoy with a bearded sailors and two battleships in the middle, and a motto saying ‘Player’s Navy Cut’, which I interpreted as ‘Players Never Cut’. I wondered why they didn’t and what games they played with battleships.”

His mother, Veronica, was the grand-daughter of Sir Andrew Noble, the artillery and ballistics expert who headed up William Armstrong’s Tyneside munitions factory.

“She had her first experience of flying when her father (Sir George Noble) took her to Paris in 1919 in a converted bomber,” wrote Lord Gainford. “She recalled it as being an uncomfortable trip, the seats were of wicker, the flight was bumpy and airsickness was a hazard. Nevertheless, it must have been an exciting experience for a 19-year-old girl.”

Moving in such high-flying circles, his parents became friends with Captain Ted Fresson, a pioneer aviator during the First World War who, in the 1920s, put on flying demonstrations and joyrides at country fairs.

An Avro 504 on a field on the outskirts of Richmond in about 1930. George Pease's parents were keen fliers - his mother flew solo in this year and his father flew to Belgium on mining business

“One day, he brought his Avro 504, G-EBGZ, to a field near Richmond and took us for short flips in it,” wrote Lord Gainford. “When my turn came, I sat on my father’s knees and, as the safety belt would not go round us both, he simply put his arms around me!

“The result was that I had a good vantage point from which to view the surroundings. I remember the take-off with the roar of the engine and the smell of the burning castor oil, with which it was lubricated.

“Looking down on the town, I particularly noted the gas works, which was a prominent feature.”

George Pease as a baby with his parents, Veronica and Joseph, and older brother, Joseph to whom the Radio 4 bongs are dedicated, on steps in the grounds of Swale House, Richmond, in 1927

On the ground, his mother had a Wolseley Hornet Special, a four-seater open-topped sports car, in which she drove her boys to the beach at Saltburn and Redcar, while his father, Joseph, had a 24hp Ford – he once crashed into the gates of Gainford level crossing.

Joseph and George Pease at Saltburn in the late 1920s

As the 1930s ground on, the economic depression hit even the Peases’ businesses. His father, Joseph, who had served throughout the First World War with Lovat’s Scouts, had to sell his Northern Sabulite firm, which specialised in mining explosives, to ICI and the family had to downsize to a rented property on Gainford green with a view over the annual maypole.

His father, who before the war had managed a colliery near Crook, opened a hunting, shooting and fishing sports shop in Horsemarket, Darlington.

Darlington Market Place from the top of St Cuthbert's Church tower in the 1930s, when Joseph Pease had his sports shop in Horsemarket

“There was a cartridge-loading machine in a back room that fascinated me. The cartridge cases, which came from Belgium, were filled with very precise quantities of powder and shot, separated by woods and a final wad crimped over at the ends,” wrote Lord Gainford. “He also sold fishing flies and was skilled at tying them according to a set pattern.

“Above the shop my mother established her own business of woollen clothing for ladies, much of the stock being knitted by herself while the rest was farmed out to the wives of local miners.”

In the early 1930s, Joseph Pease set up a sporting outfitters in Horsemarket. In 1932, he had a stand at Redcar racecourse

However, the retail experiment was short-lived and, in 1935, Joseph retired from the family business at the age of 46, and bought a remote peninsula, Taynish, on the west coast of Scotland.

“I have since felt that the uprooting of our family from my native country was a terrible loss and I have quietly regretted it ever since,” Lord Gainford wrote in 2016. “I have much sympathy with the far worse plight of the people now trying to escape the destruction of their lives in the current wave of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.”

Haward & Robinson, Darlington's famous removal company, unloading the Peases' possessions at Taynish in October 1935 as they moved from Gainford to Scotland

From the age of eight, he had been sent to boarding schools in the south, ending up at Eton, but it was the move to Scotland that really severed his connections with the North Yorkshire and south Durham area. In later life he “tried to recapture that connection”, joining the Wensleydale railway and supporting Darlington’s efforts to promote its railway heritage.

Because his family tree was deeply rooted in this area, and includes a surprising connection with a great British institution that is celebrating its centenary this year.

His great-great-great-grandfather was Edward who, with George Stephenson, created the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825. His great-great-grandfather was Joseph, whose still statue stands in the centre of Darlington. His great-grandfather was Sir Joseph, of Hutton Hall, near Guisborough, who had the misfortune to head the family affairs at the time of their financial collapse in 1902.

His grandfather was Joseph Albert ‘Jack’ Pease (above, as Darlington mayor in 1889), who was born in Woodlands in Darlington (now St Teresa’s Hospice). He married Ethel Havelock-Allan, of the Blackwell Grange military family, and founded and captained Durham County Cricket Club – Wisden says that he played until he was 74 when he gave up because he was no longer able to take a quick single.

In 1889, aged 29, he became the town’s youngest ever mayor and was then the youngest mayor ever in the country. He was elected to Parliament in 1892, as the Liberal MP for Tyneside, and as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he was a member of HH Asquith’s cabinet that took Britain into the First World War, forcing him to renounce his membership of the Peace Society. In 1916, he became Postmaster General and when he was given a peerage in 1917, he took the title of Lord Gainford, of Headlam Hall – he had bought the 17th Century hall in 1912, and he also had a London home within earshot of Big Ben.

Headlam Hall, near Gainford, which Jack Pease bought in 1912

In 1922, Lord Gainford became the first chair of the newly-formed British Broadcasting Company. The company was a consortium of wireless manufacturers who came together to produce material for their customers to receive wirelessly, and Jack was asked to be their chairman because he was “a prominent public man unconnected with any of the constituent companies”.

Jack became a wireless enthusiast, and introduced at least one innovation which still sounds out across the nation every day to this day.

In those days, it was customary for a nanny to bring a baby to see its parents for a pat on the head before bath time at precisely 6pm. Jack noticed in his London home that whenever his young grandson Joseph (known as "Zef" to distinguish him from the family's other Josephs) was presented to his parents, he would hear the six chimes of Big Ben sounding across the city and gurgle with delight. In February 1924, the BBC introduced the six pips to indicate the start of each hour, but Jack insisted that 6pm should be announced by the chimes of Big Ben so that babies across the country could enjoy the same experience as Zef.

And so even now on Radio 4, while the other hours start with the pips, 6pm is heralded by the sound of "Zef's bongs".

A cartoon of the 1st Lord Gainford who was an enthusiastic embroiderer - when he went to London for meetings, he would take his embroidery with him and work on it in the privacy of his first class carriage. In the background is an old BBC radio microphone

The first incarnation of the BBC was a commercial enterprise funded by a levy on wireless set sales and Jack helped pilot it during its difficult early days as it transformed into the public service British Broadcasting Corporation, funded by a radio licence fee. He served as deputy chairman and a governor until 1932.

He died in 1943 at Headlam Hall and his eldest son, Joseph, became the 2nd Lord Gainford. On his death in 1971, his eldest son, "Zef", became the 3rd Lord Gainford, and when he died in 2013, the title passed to his brother, George, who had developed a career as a leading architect in Scotland. It is George who has recently died, his son Adrian has now become the 5th Lord Gainford, of Headlam Hall.

A professional photograph of Joseph and George Pease, and Boss the dog, in the early 1930s