Flax lead bale seal from 1788 found near Darlington

Detectorist Mark McMullan, aka “the history hunter”, has found a lump of lead the size of a £1 coin. It is a flax bale seal.

Stamped on one side are letters and figures: “N.P / IM.12H / 1788.”

On the other side, it says: “I.KOSLOV”.

What a story Mark has deciphered from this writing!

The two sides of the seal on a field of beautiful blue flaxA seal was applied to a bale of flax as it was being exported from Russia to show the appropriate taxes had been paid. I Koslov was the name of the tax inspector – surely his first name was Ivan – who certified that the bale was ready to leave.

Mr Koslov had charge of the ports of St Petersburg and Kronstadt, which are close to each other in Russia, and Narva, in Estonia, and Riga, in Latvia, both of which were under Russian control.

The “N.P” on the seal tells us the bale’s paperwork was done in Narva Port, although it doesn’t necessarily mean it was exported from there.

The “IM” refers to the grower or his agent who was doing the exporting, and the “12H” tells us the quality of the bale – it contained 12 heads of flax.

And “1788” is the date of export.

HuckabackIn the 18th Century, Darlington had a European reputation for its huckaback, a coarse but absorbent type of linen – material which is made from flax – that was used for tablecloths, tea towels and bedspreads.

In the 1750s, Darlington was "the most noted place in the whole world for the linen manufacture of the sort called huckabacks…great quantities of which are sent yearly to London, the broad sort being made nowhere else in England".

READ MORE: CLARKSON'S HEAD FOR HEIGHTS ON A DARLINGTON-MADE BRIDGE ON HIS GRAND TOUR

The fields around the town must have been full of the beautiful bluey plant. After it was harvested, the tall flax stems would have lain in the fields, soaking in the dew and the rain until the fibres could be beaten out of them. Flax dressers would clean and comb the fibres until they looked like blonde hair – flaxen. Then the weavers took over.

Such voracious was the appetite of the weavers that there wasn’t enough local flax for them, and so in the 1760s, an average of 207 tons of flax was imported into Stockton every year from the Baltic.

And in 1777, there is a record that says Darlington flax dealer John Clement, of High Row, had taken delivery of £500-worth of flax – about £70,000 today, according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator, so a substantial cargo – which had been grown in St Petersburg in Russia.

Another player in this game was John Kendrew, whose mother, Mary, had a market garden where Kendrew Street, off Northgate, is today.

An 1825 map of Darlington, with St Cuthbert's Church in the centre beside the river. Beneath it is the Poor House and then, on the opposite bank of the river, is a large, dark building which we think is the Low Mill owned by James Backhouse where John Kendrew workedJohn was a weaver in Low Mill, opposite St Cuthbert's Church, which was owned by the Backhouse family. They financed him as he invented and patented a spinning frame for flax and wool in 1787. Three years later, their money enabled him to buy Darlington’s first commercial steam engine, from Boulton & Watt of Birmingham, and it worked so efficiently in Low Mill that Darlington became the largest producer of linen yarn in the country.

Low Mill, beside the Skerne, awaiting demolition in the early 1960s. We think this mill was on the opposite bank to where the Town Hall is now, and that here John Kendrew worked on everything from flax spinning to spectacle grinding with Darlington's first commercial steam engine

The engine also allowed John to create a sideline of grinding and polishing glass into round lens, and soon he was touring the north selling his new fangled spectacles. Sadly, he had not patented this breakthrough so unscrupulous entrepreneurs in Birmingham stole his idea, put it into mass-production causing John to lose his market.

Then he had to go to court to protect his flax-spinning patent. He sued a Leeds businessman, John Marshall, for £900 for breaking it, but in 1793 he was awarded only £300.

This seems to have been the final straw for Kendrew, as he soon left Low Mill and died in 1800, in Haughton.

But could the 1788 seal have been from a bale of flax that the pioneering Kendrew used on the banks of the Skerne – it would have arrived just in time for his steam-powered heyday? The seal would have been ripped off the bale and thrown away, as worthless as the cooking instructions wrapped around a supermarket chicken.

And so it lay beneath the Darlington soil for 236 years until Mark and his detector discovered it, a remarkable find from the days when the town led the continent.

• To learn more about Mark’s finds, follow the History Hunter on Facebook. He only hunts on land where he has permission.

READ NEXT: THE DARLINGTON GLIDERMAN WHO DIED 80 YEARS AGO AT ARNHEM, TRYING TO CAPTURE THE BRIDGE THAT WAS TOO FAR