“GARDEN fete at Kirby Sigston”, said the top of the article in the North Star newspaper in June 1901. This earth-shattering news seems to be the only other time that the Rectory to the east of Northallerton had been in the headlines until last August when the property, now the home of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, was invaded by Greenpeace protestors.
Then it was catapulted far beyond the local headlines of the North Star to the top of the national news agenda.
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Four Greenpeace activists faced charges of criminal damage to Rishi’s roof last week, to which they pleaded not guilty, and the case has now been adjourned until September 20.
The garden party of 1901 was an altogether more genteel affair. The Rectory was built in 1826 and connected by a raised path across its plashy grounds to the 12th Century church of St Lawrence at the bottom of the garden.
St Lawrence once served a medieval village now long disappeared, and the original raised path has also gone, as a large pond has been dug in the Rectory grounds, presumably to combat their plashiness.
The weather in 1901 would not have improved the conditions under foot. “It proved rather showery, but the large and numerous company enjoyed a most pleasant afternoon,” said the North Star, a Conservative morning newspaper published in Darlington.
The fete was so that the rector, Charles Slingsby Atkinson Slingsby, could say farewell to his flock and introduce the new rector, his relation, Edmund Atkinson.
The Slingsbys were the lords of the manor, although Charles had had to change his surname by Act of Parliament to Slingsby in order to inherit the estate from his cousin, who lived at Scriven, near Knaresborough.
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This was not a hardship compared to the sacrifices a previous Slingsby had made to gain possession of his desired estate.
It is said that two Slingsby brothers were sailing from France and arguing over who would get the Scriven estate. They agreed that it would be whoever laid hand on English soil first, so one of the brothers hacked off his own hand and lobbed it from the boat onto the beach, and to this day, the Slingsby coat-of-arm features a severed hand.
Charles’ garden party followed the marriage of his daughter, Elizabeth, to the son of the rector of Hurworth.
Their wedding presents displayed in the Rectory dining room “attracted a great deal of attention and admiration”, said the North Star.
Dinner was served for 500 guests in a large marquee erected in the Rectory grounds.
“Each guest was present with a piece of bridescake. In the tea tent, Mr John Slingsby gave gramophone selections. Capital sports were also held, being managed by Lt Slingsby and Mr P Slingsby. The Osmotherley Brass Band played selections during the afternoon and evening, while Mr W Foster’s Quadrille Band from Northallerton also played excellent selections of music, and at night supplied music for an enjoyable dance.”
As the North Star report suggests, the Kirby Sigston rector’s family had a military bent: his eldest son became a commander in the Royal Navy, and his middle son, a major in the Indian Army.
They were born in the 1870s, but marital life gave the rector an unexpected late joy: in 1898, another son, John, was born when the rector was 55-years-old and his wife 47. John would only have been three at the time of the garden party and so would have been tucked up in his cot while his uncle John was spinning his gramophone selections in the tea tent.
But, on January 1, 1925, John – only 16 years old – was a midshipman on HMS Formidable undertaking gunnery exercises in the English Channel without any destroyer protection. At 2.20am on New Year’s Day, it was struck by a torpedo fired by U-24, a German submarine, and immediately began to list. The captain ordered his crew of 750 to abandon ship and then, at 3.05am, Formidable was struck by a second torpedo.
It had sunk by 4.45am, about 37 miles off the Devon coast.
John was not one of the 199 who were saved. In fact, his body was never recovered.
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