THIS was no ordinary wedding. On January 15, 1890, Edward Lloyd Pease, of Pierremont in Darlington, married his first cousin once removed, Blanche Pease, of Hutton Hall at Guisborough.
The two branches of the family were not just united in matrimony but also in construction: they built for the happy couple “a stunning country house” which has gone on the market this week for £2.5m.
READ MORE: THE DARLINGTON MANSION ON THE MARKET FOR £2.5m
The Quaker cousins – Pease in a pod, perhaps – were married in the Friends Meeting House in Guisborough and the North Star newspaper, a Conservative rival to the Liberal Northern Echo, sent a writer with the most verbose of Victorian vocabularies to describe the scene. Please make sure you are sitting comfortably before you read on…
“The sun shone in a clear sky, filling the empyrean with a glorious golden light, and flooding the beautifully diversified landscape of the valley, over which towering Highcliffe keeps watch and guard, with its pulse-quickening beams. The air was soft and mild, and there was a pervading feeling of the approaching Spring-tide, which was the more grateful after the raging storm which had a few hours before resistlessly swept on its course over the heathy moorland and hurled itself down into the peaceful vale wherein stands the ruined abbey of Guisborough.
“Nature was at peace, and all things seemed partakers in the joy which filled the breasts of the happy lovers who were embarking together upon a journey across the ocean of life and to augur for them a voyage full of happiness and joy unalloyed.
“That the feeling of goodwill with which the rays of the sun seemed to invest the gently murmuring trees, the purling brook, and the smiling fields, was actually existent in the hearts of the villagers of Hutton, the townspeople of Guisborough, and the household at Hutton Hall was manifested by the gladness which sparkled in their eyes and wreathed their faces in pleasant smiles, by the beautiful triumphal arches supporting legends expressive of hearty good wishes, such as ‘God bless the happy pair’, which were erected at the entrance to and in the grounds of Hutton Hall, and the garlands of evergreens, Venetian masts, and gay-coloured flags which adorned Hutton Gate Station.”
Phew!
Edward “the Father of the Railways” Pease was the grandfather of the groom and the great-grandfather of the bride.
Blanche’s branch of the Darlington family had shifted eastwards to oversee their growing interests in the iron industry of Teesside – their blast furnaces by the Tees and their ironstone mines in the Cleveland Hills which were connected by their railways.
Her father, Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, had built the most splendid country home at Hutton Hall, near Guisborough, and her brothers took up residence in nearby secondary halls, like Pinchinthorpe. Each had their own private halt on the railway.
After their wedding ceremony, a special train carried the happy couple from Guisborough to Bank Top. As it passed through stations, it detonated fog warning explosives that had been deliberately placed on the tracks to act as “a rattling feu de joie” – a celebratory salute of gunfire.
At Bank Top station, they caught the 4.55pm express to the south for their honeymoon.
“The bride’s travelling dress was of blue vicugna cloth, trimmed with beaver and gold passementerie, and she wore a beaver felt hat to match, trimmed with velvet and ostrich feathers,” said the Echo.
After the honeymoon it was back to their new home, of Hurworth Moor House, a seven bedroom, five bathroom mansion to the south-east of Darlington which has just gone on the market. It is to the south of the football stadium and to the north of Neasham, and is approached by Burma Lane.
It was designed by Darlington architects Frederick Clark and William Moscrop, who built a couple of hundred buildings in our area between 1882 and 1924, most famously Barnard Castle School, the North Eastern Bank on Darlington’s High Row (now occupied by Darlington Building Society) and the town’s first purpose-built cinema, the Empire, opposite the library.
Edward Lloyd Pease had an engineering firm, Ashmore, Benson & Pease, in Stockton, and Blanche was the president of the Durham County Federation of Womens Institutes for 22 years. She was a magistrate for 20 years, a founder of George Dent Nursery School, and for 25 years she was the chairman of the Training College for Mistresses in Vane Terrace – recently the Arts Centre, but now flats. Indeed, a hall of residence for student teachers at the college was named Blanche Pease Hall in her honour – it was demolished about 10 years ago for housing.
READ MORE: EDWARD LLOYD PEASE'S GROTESQUE WALKING STICK
In Memories 651 last October, when we reported how Edward’s grotesque walking stick was coming under the hammer in Derby, we said that Hurworth Moor House is one of Darlington’s “great unseen mansions”.
Now it is for sale, we can see its library with a secret door concealed amid the bookshelves, its orangery and its conservatory, its two stable blocks, its balustrated terrace, its greenhouse with a grapevine, and “its peaceful pond with a Monet bridge”.
Edward and Blanche, and their four children, must have been very happy there.
READ MORE: MEET LADY STARMER, THE FIRST LADY OF DARLINGTON
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