Sir Robert Ropner, from stowaway to donating a park to Stockton

Sir Robert Ropner (below) died almost exactly 100 years ago to the day – on February 26, 1924, so we are only a month out – and his name lives on in Ropner Park, which was officially opened by royalty in 1893 on one of the most glittering and extravagant of days that the Tees Valley has ever seen.

The opening was contrived to be the high point of Major Ropner’s year as Stockton’s mayor. Even Prince George, the Duke of York and second in line to the throne, praised the benefactor that day, saying in his short speech to the celebratory luncheon: “He is not only the head of your municipality, but he is also the donor of the beautiful park which I have had the pleasure of opening today, a park which cannot fail to be of inestimable benefit as a place of recreation after the hours of toil for those whose time is for a great extent spent in developing the resources of the borough.”

The object of this praise had been born Emil Hugo Oscar Robert Ropner in Magdeburg in Prussia in 1838, but both his parents died of cholera when he was ten. They left enough money for him, and his nine siblings, to get a basic education, but at the age of 19 he and friend decided to run away to Australia.

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They reached the port of Hamburg, where they found a vessel bound down under. But there was only one job going on it, so Robert’s friend sailed for a new life on the other side of the globe leaving him on the quayside.

A second vessel, the SS Dora, was also about to depart Hamburg, but it was bound for somewhere far less exotic than Australia: West Hartlepool.

Still, Robert climbed aboard – some sources say that he stowed away; others say that he worked his passage. The sources agree, though, that the voyage was so stormy and Robert was so seasick that he vowed never to go to sea again – no matter where he ended up.

He ended up without a penny in his pocket and a word of English in his vocabulary, standing on the foreign dockside of West Hartlepool.

He got a job in a bakery, and married Mary Anne Craik, the baker’s daughter. Soon she had buns in the oven, and he got a better job working for Thomas Appleby’s firm of coal exporters. In 1868, he launched Appleby’s first steamship and then, in 1875, launched his own line of ships. By the 1880s, Robert had one of the largest lines in the world.

Robert Ropner bought Preston Hall, in Eaglescliffe, in 1882, and he died there in 1924. Lady Mary Ropner pre-deceased her husband and so their eldest son, Leonard, inherited the estate. He lived there until his death in 1937 after which property developers bought it. When their scheme fell through, Stockton council purchased the hall and opened it as a museum in 1953. Its grounds became the second public park connected to Sir Robert

Although he was a councillor and pillar of the community in West Hartlepool, in 1882, Robert decided that Stockton was the place for him, and he bought Preston Hall at Eaglescliffe for £27,500 to which he added a Winter Garden, a ballroom, and a billiards room and he landscaped the parkland.

It was only 25 years since he first set foot on North East soil but in that time he had amassed such a fortune that he was able to buy a mansion worth, in today’s values according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, £2.72m – and then lavishly extend it. The Northern Echo said in 1893: “His grasp of business details and his commercial acumen are of a remarkable character.”

In 1888, he bought the North Shore shipyard on the Tees at Stockton, and extended into ship-building. By the outbreak of the First World War, it had built 60 ships and was the third largest yard in the country, employing 1,500 people.

In 1890, Stockton council decided it wanted a public park, but it didn’t have the money. Robert’s wife, Mary, heard and suggested he might like to fund it.

On June 17, 1890, from the exceedingly expensive Castle Hotel in Windsor, he wrote a brief note to the council.

“Dear Mr Mayor, I think a park for a town like yours most desirable, if not absolutely necessary, and I have therefore much pleasure in offering to pay the cost of the ground under consideration provided the council will undertake to lay it tastefully and keep it for ever. Please acknowledge receipt to Preston Hall, and believe me, yours faithfully. R Ropner.”

An Edwardian postcard showing the lake at Ropner Park

The council certainly believed him. He bought 36 acres of the undulating Hartburn Fields for £8,250 which he presented to the council on February 5, 1891 – the day the council responded by making him the first freeman of the borough.

On July 25, 1891, Mary cut the first sod using “a magnificent silver spade with ebony shaft”, and the grateful council offered Robert the post of mayor.

He declined but, with work on the park progressing, in November 1892, he accepted a second invitation, and the park was ready for the people in the spring of 1893 soon after Robert had been presented with the mayoral chains.

The Echo said that the park was laid out in “a series of beautiful curves forming walks and avenues, with raised mounds at intervals, ornamentally shaped and planted, so as to shield the grounds from the inclement weather and cold winds”.

The mock Elizabethan lodge house beside the main gate into Ropner Park was the home of the park superintendent

It was accessed via a “handsome gate” on Hartburn Lane beside which a half-timbered Elizabethan-style lodge had been built for the park superintendent, Mr HA Mann, formerly of Crystal Palace Gardens.

It featured an avenue to an imposing fountain of “a very admirable design”, which had 40 water jets and a centre spray which could shoot water 20ft.

The Walter Macfarlane & Co fountain, made in Glasgow, is one of the main original features of Ropner Park and is a Grade II listed building in its own right. It is set in its 22ft diameter fish bowl. Pictures: Historic England Archive.

The bandstand was placed in Ropner Park so that it could be seen, and heard, across the whole park. Picture by Beverley Forbes McBean, of The Northern Echo Camera, taken in December 2017

On the park’s highest spot, there was a bandstand built by Walter Macfarlane & Co of Glasgow – the principal manufacturers of ornamental ironwork in the country. It had seats for 24 performers and, said the Echo, “its acoustic properties are perfect in every particular”.

There were gymnasiums for boys and girls, a cricket ground with a pavilion and refreshment rooms and a 3.5 acre lake.

“The water in the lake is ornamental in the summer, and will be used for skating and other purposes in winter,” said the Echo. “Its greatest depth is about 3ft 9ins. At the north end of the lake are the workmen’s dormitories and living rooms and the propagating houses.”

The grand golden gates at the entrance to Ropner Park were replaced during the multi-million pound restoration of the park in 2004-06

Robert had spent £15,308 2s 10d (about £1.65m in today’s values) creating the park, and its official opening, on October 4, 1893, was to be the highlight of his year in office. However, because he didn’t want the extravagant festivities to be a drain on the council budget, he encouraged local people to donate to a special fund but he footed nearly all the expenses himself.

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And what a day it was.

“The entire district of Stockton, and for miles around, was a scene of fluttering gaiety, in which all the colours of the rainbow were used,” said the Echo.

Lord Londonderry, of Wynyard Hall, had secured the services of the Duke and Duchess of York for the occasion. It was to be one of their first official engagements since they had married three months earlier, so Stockton was suddenly gripped by royal fever.

The couple stayed at Wynyard Hall ahead of the big day, and then drove in a carriage parade through Norton and into Stockton. The streets were lined with people and with triumphal arches in evergreens with slogans like “God Bless the Union”, “New joys await you”, and, on the way out, “God’s benison go with you”.

King George V and Queen Mary at their coronation in 1912. They wed in July 1893 and one of their first public engagements as a married couple was opening Ropner Park

The Echo’s reporter said the best banner that he spotted in the crowd said: “Not a London Show, but a London Welcome.”

“The High Street itself was one mass of decoration,” he wrote. “Streamers floated from the summit of the Town Hall to its base; flags waved from the Borough Hall, the Shambles and the Parish Church. The Market Cross was wreathed with evergreens and surrounded with plants, and every lamp-post bore flag-trophied shields, while the central lamps had also banks of plants and foliage.”

Robert had paid for Messrs Defries of London to elaborately dress the park, and in where at least 20,000 people awaiting the royal guests. 3,000 members of friendly societies and unions processed around the parks, 7,000 schoolchildren lustily sung the national anthem, and there were guns firing, bands playing, drums crashing, bannerettes flapping and an occasional shower falling without marring the occasion.

The fountain in Ropner Park with a Sebastopol cannon beside it. The Russian cannon was captured during the Crimean War and was one of 553 that were distributed by the British government to towns which wanted to display them as symbols of the victory

On the dais, the head horticulturist, Mr Watt of Carlisle, presented Mrs Ropner with a bouquet, and said: “May I express a hope that you and your generous husband may be spared to see this very beautiful park developed into a great health resort for this thriving industrial town, of which His Worship is a pillar.”

The duke and duchess were presented with more flowers, gold keys and illuminated addresses bound in Moroccan leather than they could ever hope to carry. From the dais, Prince George said: “We congratulate you on the public spirit exhibited by all classes in the promotion of such a useful and such an excellent object as that we are now assembled together to inaugurate, and it must also be a source of rejoicing to you all to have at the head of your municipal affairs the man who, by his generous gift of the land which forms this park, has contributed so much towards its formation.”

Then everyone headed to the Exchange Hall in the High Street for an amazing luncheon that Robert had paid for. There were 350 diners and 575 spectators in the balcony watching them dine.

Stockton High Street in 1939 with the Exchange Hall still visible. The hall was built in 1874. Below: You can still make it out in the High Street today (Picture: Google StreetView)

The hall later became a cinema and suffered numerous fires but its barest outline can still be seen on the streetline. Robert had had it decorated with plants supplied by William Strike, who had a seedsman’s shop nearby, and extravagant fittings by Messrs Womersley of Leeds.

“The Duchess’s rooms were lined with art fabrics in amber and cream alternately with Madras festoons, and a series of gold gerandoles fixed on the walls covered with Oriental green carpet and rugs, and fitted with a handsome suite of furniture in plush, velvet, and satin together with several specially designed crimson and gold chairs covered with satin,” said the Echo, which devoted many other paragraphs to descriptions of the duke’s rooms and all the corridors and reception rooms which were similarly sumptuously decorated.

The only thing the paper doesn’t record is whether the duchess ever looked into her retiring rooms. If she did, it can only have been for the briefest of moments and her derriere wouldn’t have had time to warm a specially designed crimson and gold chair covered in satin.

After the luncheon, there were more speeches and toasts and presentations before Prince George and Princess Mary departed to catch the 4.30pm train from Stockton station (it passed through Eaglescliffe at 4.34pm, Northallerton at 4.55pm, Thirsk 5.05pm, where huge crowds warmly waved at it before reaching York at 5.30pm).

The lake in Ropner Park in April 1959

But the festivities were not done in Stockton. The October night had by now drawn in so the town centre became ablaze with illuminations provided by the latest energy technology.

“The town was literally scintillated with flashing gems, relieved by blazing white designs in gas,” said the Echo. “The windows of the Town Hall were lined with prismatic lamps, lit not with oil but with gas, and on the north front centre was a large sparkling white crystal flanked on either side with large amber crystal letters ‘G’ and ‘M’.”

But the royal couple had already left so they never got to see their initials glimmering in the Stockton night air.

“At the park, a scene of Eastern beauty was presented,” said the Echo. “Thousands of vari-coloured Vauxhall lamps lined the entrances, the lodges, the paths, the bandstand, the fountains and the lake.

“From the huge flag-staff, just presented by Major Ropner, there were scores of sweeping lines of large Chinese lanterns and bigger ones in varied designs were dotted about the grounds suspended from trees and shrubs. The pavilion had a splendid arrangement of gas illuminated crystals, with initials and the motto both of the mayor and the borough.”

The day came to an end at 8pm with a display of fireworks by Messrs Pain & Co of London, which is still the largest pyrotechnic company in the country.

“Commencing with a salute of aerial guns, a series of gorgeous rockets followed, showering as they fell masses of resplendent jewels,” said the Echo. “Then there were huge balloons with various tinted lights, whistling bombs, mines of jewels and crackers, salvos of shells and a host of other specimens of the pyrotechnist’s art dazzling to the eye but exciting an almost continuous series of “ahs” and “ohs” from the thousands of assembled spectators.”

Spring flowers in Ropner Park photographed by John Clark of The Northern Echo Camera Club in 2019

The Northern Echo of 1893 finished by seeing great potential in the new park, even the first two years of its existence had been plagued by bad weather.

“Unfortunately again this season the long continuance of dry weather has materially interfered with the plants and foliage of the park generally,” it said, “but it is now satisfactory to record that the park since it has been in the hands of corporation has given promise of being one of the prettiest in the north of England.”

Robert was Stockton’s Conservative MP for a decade from 1900, and in 1902, was knighted for services to shipping. Two years later, he was made a baronet and took as his title his two mansions: Preston Hall and Skutterskelfe Hall near Hutton Rudby.

He was the High Sheriff of Durham in 1896 and had a long connection with the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, becoming a colonel during the First World War.

He died, aged 85, 100 years ago last month and was buried at Hutton Rudby church. During his funeral, the vicar of Stockton, the Rev JB Purvis, said: “Robert Ropner received in his life, industrial and political, such criticism as fell to the lot of all strong public men (although he never had a Twitter account), but of few could it be said that he never said a small, mean or spiteful thing of anyone. Whatever other name might be applied to him at the end of his days here this one was his due: the grand old name of gentleman.”

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Like many municipal parks, ornamental carpet bedding commemorating a notable local anniversary used to be a big thing. Here in July 1976, designer Mike Langley and gardener Ray Hewitson look at their display commemorating the 150th anniversary of John Walker inventing the friction match