Once more unto the breeches: Ena's wonderful trip down memory lane

The picture is in a bundle of postcards that has come our way. They date from just after the First World War, and all the others show scenes of Darlington so we presume that our stylish lady is from the early 1920s and walking on a Darlington street – could it be one of the terraces that was cleared in the 1960s for the inner ring road?

Ena Gowland in Spring Gardens, West Auckland, was not concerned by the location of the picture but was particularly interested in our stylish lady’s apparel, especially her breeches.

“They remind me so much of my mother, Doris Baker, who was born in 1910 and lived in Harrogate Hill, Darlington,” she says. “Her father, Henry Baker, was a dairyman and grocer. According to a photograph that was once in The Northern Echo, he was the first person to purchase a motorised milk float in the town.”

It is a fabulous photo of a marvellous motor. It has a Darlington registration: HN249. Can anyone tell us anything about the vehicle, and is that a bottle of milk Henry is holding or a colliery lamp?

“The family also farmed at Peartree farm at Bolam,” continues Ena, taking us to a village in the highlands to the north-west of Darlington. “Although mother did not ride, she wore this outfit of breeches when out in the country, on the farm, and in the town on business.”

Above and below: Doris Baker, 14, at Peartree Farm in Bolam in 1924 wearing a smart shirt and tie and breeches, like our stylish lady

“Breeches” is an ancient word, going back more than a thousand years. It originally meant “clothing for the loins and thighs”, but gradually the clothing grew in length to just below the knee. It initially referred to underwear, but by the 16th Century, breeches became a fashionable men’s outer garment. It is a plural word because, like trousers, there are two legs joined together to make one garment.

“When I left school in 1946, the breeches were handed down to me still smart and serviceable, and saw me through cold winters on our dairy farm at Butterknowle,” says Ena (above).

“Then they were passed on to my younger brother, Eric. A few weeks ago, he reminded me of the day in 1950 when he went sledging in the breeches.”

Ena finishes: “Our family has never belonged to the throwaway society.”

THEN Ena takes us back to Memories 588 earlier in the summer which featured a fabulous picture from the Gaunless Valley Trust showing “the flaggy dam” that was built during the baking summer of 1926 when the Durham miners were on strike and so had time to frolic in the cool water.

“Flaggy”, we think, is a south Durham word for flat rocks that look like flagstones. The miners, with time on their hands, dammed a stream with them, plus daubs of mud and cobbles, to create the plunge pool.

The dam was removed at the end of the summer, to allow the winter’s floodwaters to wash away, but was rebuilt the following spring for many years afterwards. Although our picture shows only male bathers, it is said that girls and women also cooled off in the flaggy dam.

In 1937, when Ena was five, her parents, Doris and Edward Stephenson, bought Lower Westgarth Farm, near Butterknowle. Its fields end with the River Gaunless and then the land rises up to Cockfield station and then onto Cockfield Fell.

The flaggy dam, Ena reveals, was in the river beneath the station.

“It attracted swimmers from Cockfield and Butterknowle,” she remembers. “These same lads and young men would come to us at harvest time, to pick potatoes and help with the corn.

“I remember 1938, Dad’s brother, uncle Laurie, came to stay for a week, building fences and hanging gates in a hot summer. My sister and I were allowed to accompany them to the dam, to watch them cool off, Dad in his navy blue and white swimming trunks, uncle in a black ‘all in one’. There were other bathers, but to see the two of them acting the fool, just like schoolboys, is a sight I’ve never forgotten.

“Our family sold Lower Westgarth Farm in 1954 and we left with wonderful memories.

“Now, 68 years later, my friend Richard Lowson, who has owned Lower Westgarth since 1964, tells me that he remembers the dam was still being built up to the mid-1970s.

“The only downside to the dam was that each year the builders would take stones for it from the farm boundary wall, leaving his dad to do all the repairs to keep the livestock in.”

Inspired by the picture in Memories of the flaggy dam, late last summer, Ena, and her friends Elaine and Richard Vizor went to see if they could find where it was.

The site of the Flaggy Dam beneath Cockfield Fell station today. Picture: Elaine Vizor

“We motored round the fields then walked down to the river and around the boundary wall which looked fantastic, not a stone out of place,” says Ena. “The trees were majestic with an abundance of hazel nuts. I sampled brambles, still as juicy as ever, and the Rowans were ablaze in red.

“At the exact spot of Flaggy Dam, the bright, light, openness of your photograph has been overtaken by nature. It is now unrecognisable, obscured by trees and bushes, but the winding, well trodden path up to Cockfield Fell is still visible.”

Cockfield station, on the line between Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle, featuring on an Edwardian postcard

COCKFIELD station opened on August 1, 1863, on the Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle railway which took the high ground above the flaggy dam.

Ena has a 100-year-old postcard (above) with a view taken from that high ground near the station. The Gaunless and the dam are somewhere in the dip beneath the photographer’s feet, and an outhouse from Ena’s Lower Westgarth Farm can be seen on the right hand side.

“It was the old farmhouse before our grand new house was built in 1894,” she says. “For us, it served as a workshop and meal store, together with a Set Pot for hot water which we drew from a well.”

On July 1, 1923, the station was renamed Cockfield Fell to avoid confusion with Cockfield, which is a village near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk with a population of 868 (even today, County Durham’s Cockfield has a population of more than 1,500, so really the Suffolk village should have given way in the battle of the railway Cockfields).

Cockfield Fell station closed to passengers on September 15, 1958, and then to goods on June 18, 1962. As the line was lifted and its viaducts blown up, the station fell derelict and was vandalised, but now it has been modernised into a comfortable home.

Cockfield Fell station derelict in 1968

“On our walk, we also observed the remains of a signal box and the animal arch that was built for a farmer to take his cattle under the railway,” says Ena. “Such wonderful memories were evoked by my walk down memory lane, all in response to such a wonderful old photograph.”

Above: Cockfield Fell station is today restored as a private residence

Below: The underpass constructed in 1863 when the Barnard Castle to Bishop Auckland railwayline was built to allow a Cockfield farmer to get his animals under the track

• With thanks to Elaine Vizor, Nick Gowland and, of course, Ena