“ABOUT 3¾ miles out of Darlington,” writes the famous artist George Algernon Fothergill, extremely precisely, in one of his sketchbooks, “up the Staindrop Road, on the right hand side, there suddenly comes into view, behind a massive orchard wall, overhung with widespreading fruit trees (a veteran mulberry amongst them), an old stone house with high pitched gables, red tiles, and here and there, a mullioned window; a building to which with appropriateness we may surely apply the epithet ‘old world’.”
This is Thornton Hall, one of only seven Grade I listed buildings in Darlington, and its beautiful gardens are open on Bank Holiday Monday (May 29), raising money for charity and also offering rare plants for sale.
READ MORE: MEET THE DARLINGTON'S MOST FAMOUS ARTIST, GEORGE ALGERNON FOTHERGILL
We met the artist Fothergill – who signed his works “GAF” – only a couple of weeks ago. He produced his sketchbooks of local scenes and hunting people from 1898 until his bankruptcy in 1908, and his pages on Thornton Hall are a good example of his work.
GAF's sketch of Thornton Hall on the outskirts of Darlington
Amid his sketchings, he outlines the history of the hall, which dates back to at least 1550 when the Tailbois family of Hurworth acquired it.
George Algernon Fothergill's sketch of the "right ugly" gargoyles at the top of Thornton Hall
He sketches one of the hall’s most controversial features: the “two curious gargoyles” which seem to have been added by the Bowes family in the 17th Century. These funny fellows were rather rudely called “right ugly nondescript animals” by the renowned Victorian historian William Longstaffe.
GAF also says that the occupant of Thornton Hall always had their own pew in St Edwin’s Church in High Coniscliffe, and he advises his readers to go to the church to inspect the memorial in the church erected by Sir Francis Bowes of the hall.
The wording on the memorial, says GAF, is “too lengthy” to add to his notes, but he concludes: “Never have I read a more mournful epitaph.”
High Coniscliffe church in the 1880s
The memorial is dedicated to Sir Francis’s father, who died in 1677 aged 66, and to his mother, Margaret, who died “in labour” in 1652, aged 33.
It is also dedicated to his three wives, Eleanor (who bore him a son, Henry, who “died young”), Catharine and, apparently his favourite, Lucy who, says the memorial, lived with him for eight years and 23 days.
In those eight years, Lucy gave birth to seven children including Lucy, who lived only four months, Francis, who lived only six years, and Catharine, who lived only eight days.
The final child was a second daughter called Lucy whose birth wife Lucy “survived only 19 days”. She died in 1683, aged 27, “much lamented by all”, as the memorial says, “by none more than Francis Bowes,
the mournful survivor of so many relations buried here”.
Little wonder that GAF didn’t feel it appropriate to sketch such sorrow into his book.
Thornton Hall, Darlington, 1975
He does, though, mention the three gardens of Thornton Hall which, he says, “were evidently laid out in the formal fashion peculiar to the 16th and 17th centuries”. However, in GAF’s day at the start of the 20th Century, “these gardens are now covered with grass and planted with orchard trees”.
Thirty-five years ago, when Sue Manners joined her new husband Michael in the hall, she shooed away the sheep and the cows who grazed on the grass right up to the back door and began recovering what she could of the old gardens while adding her own modern style. She first opened the gardens to the public in 2005 and now they are regarded as one of the finest in the district.
They are open on Monday, May 29, from 10am-4pm. Admission is £10, with proceeds going to the Sick Children’s Trust and Great North Air Ambulance. Light lunches and afternoon teas are available from the room dedicated to the long suffering Sir Francis Bowes, with local nurseries putting on a plant sale. There’s ample free parking.
GAF wouldn’t recognise the importance of the postcode DL2 2NB to locate the hall which these days is a little less than 3¾miles west of the growing town of Darlington, but he would certainly recognise the hall from his sketching days, even the “veteran mulberry tree” which remains, appropriately given Sir Francis’ sorrowful story, in its own paddock.
Thornton Hall. Picture courtesy of the Darlington Centre for Local Studies
Appropriately because in Roman mythology, Pyramus and Thisbe agreed to meet under a mulberry tree in Babylon to pursue their illicit love. Thisbe arrived first, but was so horrified by the sight of a lioness, with blood around its mouth from a fresh kill, that she fled the scene, dropping her cloak.
Then Pyramus arrived, and was so dismayed to see the bloodied lioness mauling the cloak that, fearing it had killed Thisbe, he ran himself through with his sword.
Thisbe returned to the mulberry tree and saw her lover lying dead beneath it, and so ran herself through with the same sword. The blood from the two youngsters splattered on the mulberry’s white fruit so that ever since it has ripened to a dark red colour to honour their forbidden love.
READ MORE: THE BISHOP, THE BULL AND THE SLAVES OF A DARLINGTON VILLAGE
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