IN 1873, the Darlington & Stockton Times, the Echo’s sister weekly paper, ran a series of articles by one of its most colourful pensmiths as they visited different places in the area.
Exactly 150 years ago, the writer visited Stokesley where he claimed to have been told about a mill powered by Newfoundland dogs – can this ever have been true?
Two cyclists approach the south side of Croft church on this Edwardian postcard
He followed that up with a more factual visit to Croft church, to the south of Darlington, where he was amazed by the two raised pews belonging to the local gentry that looked down on the rest of the congregation. One on the south side of the nave was the pew of the Chaytor family, of Croft Hall, while on the north was one belonging to the Wilson-Todds who had acquired it along with the Milbanke family’s residence of Halnaby Hall.
Inside Croft church, with the Chaytors' raised pew on the left and the much larger one of the Milbanke family on the right
“These pews have a marked and almost ludicrous resemblance to a sedan chair or an old four poster bedstead, and they have evidently the most ample facilities for enabling their occupants to go quietly to sleep during a dull sermon,” said the writer.
The Chaytors’ raised pew has been gone for more than a century, but the Halnaby Hall one still looms fantastically large over the heads of the ordinary worshippers today.
An Edwardian postcard showing the amazing raised pew of the Milbanke family of Halnaby Hall, which was a couple of miles outside Croft
The Victoria County History says of it: “Anything more out of place in a parish church can hardly be imagined, but its merits as a piece of joinery are beyond dispute.”
In the north aisle in the shadow of the Milbankes’ pew is their family vault which, says the article, had not received a new burial since 1822.
The funerary helmet on top of the Milbankes' tomb
“On top of the tomb there are some interesting relics of a member of the family who was concerned in the crusades,” says the article. “They include a dagger or spear, a pair of steel gloves and a helmet. A pair of spurs, belonging to the same valiant knight, used to keep these relics company until they were stolen by some sacrilegious wretch.”
More sacrilegious wretches must have visited the church since because now only the helmet survives on top of the tomb.
But can any knight ever have worn it into battle? It’s metal as a thin as a can of beans so it would not have afforded much protection amid the cut and thrust of a swordfight.
The D&S’ reporter was not impressed by the state of the church. “It now wears a tumbledown and dilapidated look,” he wrote. “There are several large and alarming cracks in the walls, and many of the pews appear to be rotting away. Indeed, the seats as a whole, are so destitute of comfort, the building is so cold and mean looking in its interior that the congregation must worship under difficulties.”
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