The bishop, the bull, and the slaves of a Darlington village

Some of the sketchbooks of artist George Algernon Fothergill - who signed himself GAF - were to be found at yesterday's Darlington Book Fair, including one dedicated to his wealthy patrons who lived around Cleasby, which is four miles south of Darlington.

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An Edwardian postcard of Cleasby, with the vicarage that Bp John Robinson paid for in 1717 on the right

It is, writes GAF, “the prettiest village for miles around, with scarce an unsightly house or cottage to be seen, scarcely even a modern building”. It is on the south bank of the Tees which, he says, flows “swiftly under the Merrybent railway bridge”.

This railway opened in 1870 and ran from the west of Darlington to quarries surrounding Barton – Junction 56 of the A1(M) now sits inside one of the quarries.

“The Merrybent bridge is now closed to foot passengers,” says GAF, which suggests people could walk alongside the trains over the Tees, “thereby preventing to a large extent the influx of Darlington people on their customary Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday rounds.” Because of a lack of TV, people in those days would perambulate for pleasure, and Cleasby via the railway bridge was obviously one of their favourite spots.

John Robinson went from a farm labourer's son to become Bishop of London but never forgot his Cleasby roots

The bishop that Cleasby gave birth to was John Robinson, born on November 7, 1650, in a cottage long gone. He showed an aptitude for books and local benefactors helped him reach Oxford university where he got a divinity degree.

In 1680, he became chaplain to the English embassy in Sweden and rose to become England’s senior diplomat there. In 1700, he rode with the young Swedish king, Charles XII, into battle on what GAF calls his “chivalrous expedition” against all-comers: Denmark, Norway, Saxony, Poland, Lithuania and Russia were all arraigned against the Swedes in the Great Northern War. After the war, the Cleasby cleric was a leading diplomat negotiating the peace.

Queen Anne recalled him to Britain and made him Bishop of Bristol. He was, says GAF perhaps with a naughty gleam in his eye, “the Queen's favourite Bishop though not, as far as we can gather, a bosom friend”.

However, the Queen entrusted him enough to be her principal plenipotentiary at the peace conference which ended the War of Spanish Succession and negotiated the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.

Robinson never lost touch with Cleasby, and sent money for the ancient church and vicarage to be rebuilt and a school for six village boys established.

GAF's sketch of the vicarage at Cleasby which Bp Robinson, of Bristol and London, enlarged in 1717 and had his coat-of-arms placed over the door. It is now a private house

When he died in 1723, because he had no children, his Cleasby estate was inherited by the family of his eldest brother, Christopher, who had emigrated from the banks of the Tees to Virginia in the US.

“He was a shrewd Yorkshireman who became secretary of the colony,” wrote GAF. “He acquired a good deal of land in Middlesex County, Virginia, and died in 1693. These were the days of slavery. One of his slaves, mentioned in a will, bore the name of “Cleasby”, and in 1689, he imported 52 persons into his county – 26 whites and 26 negroes”.

GAF calls the slave trade “barbarous and uncivilised” but points out that in Robinson’s day, it was as natural as capturing and selling well cattle.

The white slaves were probably from British prisons.

GAF says that the American Robinsons owned the bishop’s Cleasby estate in 1776 when they sold it and “invested in land and n…” and then he uses that n-word for a second time. It was not a lucrative investment, though, as soon after, when the American War of Independence came to an end all of their land was confiscated.

Fothergill's drawing of The Old Hall, Cleasby, looking north to the chimneys of Darlington. The original was owned by Sir Theodore Fry, Darlington's second MP, who acquired the hall through his marriage to Sophia Pease

Beyond giving birth to a bishop, the artist says Cleasby’s other great claim to fame is burying a bull: Comet.

Comet was a mountain of meat bred in 1804 by Charles Colling of Ketton Hall, to the north of Darlington. It was one of the first giant shorthorn cattle, bred for their enormity. In 1810, it became the first bull in the world to be sold for 1,000 guineas – in agricultural circles, it was as famous as Trevor Francis, the first million pound footballer, and probably the most famous animal in the country.

Comet, the first £1,000 bull which was was bred in Ketton and lived its last days at Cleasby

The new owners were a consortium: Colonel Trotter and Messrs Wetherall, Wright and Charge. Mr Wright lived in Cleasby and Comet came to live in his red tiled shed where he worked as a stud.

When Comet died in 1815, Mr Wright buried him in Comet’s Garth, planted a chestnut tree over him and composed an ode:

In decent repose and in safety thy lie
And oft shall I yield thee a merited sigh;
Thou hast earned it by service, long, varied and true –
Then to all but thy memory, old Comet, adieu!

In 1865, says GAF, a new owner of the property, Mr Thornton, cut down the tree and dug up Comet’s massive remains, “including the gigantic shoulder blade and upper part of the skull, deposited in a glass case, which may now be seen at his son’s house in Stapleton, where I had the pleasure of making a sketch, on purpose for these notes, of that most interesting collection. Some day, let us hope, they will be presented to Darlington for the future museum”.

GAF's drawing of the massive remains of Comet

When the Tubwell Row museum opened in 1921, we believe they were donated but have long since disappeared.

The location of Comet’s Garth is also not known – unless someone can point us to it.

Comet House, a red tiled shed, on the left, as drawn by GAF. Where was it?

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The printer's mark, designed by Fothergill, on his early sketchbooks

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