ON the northern outskirts of Darlington is a hotel in a haunted hall that dates back to at least the 14th Century which was once home to wealthy railwaymen.

Hall Garth, in Coathman Mundeville, means a “meeting hall in a field” and this name dates from the late 13th Century days of Bishop Antony Bek who had a hunting lodge here, and to this day, an 18th Century deerhouse is a feature of the Hall Garth Hotel’s golf course.

Hall Garth in Coatham Mundeville in Henry Carrick's day. Pictures courtesy of Jonathan Peacock We recently became interested Hall Garth because during the First World War, the Summerson family allowed 20 Belgian refugees to live there when their home country was over-run by the Germans.

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Jonathan Peacock has been researching the history of Hall Garth and the earliest reference he has found to the property is from 1382, when it was referred to as “Halgarth in Cothome Amunvill”.

Over the centuries, it had many owners, although none of them had a story to tell as sensational as that of Mundeville villager Anthony Arrowsmith who, as we told yesterday, was pressed to death in Durham Market Place.

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In the 19th Century, the nature of the owners changed from agricultural to industrial.

In 1829, Hall Garth was taken on by Henry Pascoe Smith, a director of the Wear Valley Railway who was important in extending the line from Frosterley up to Stanhope.

In his day, Hall Garth had a vinery 40ft by 14ft with well established vines, and his gardener,

Mr Hope won first prize at the Darlington Horticultural Society with his white grapes.

Henry died in 1866 aged 81.

Railway engineer Henry Carrick at Hall Garth in the 1890sIn the 1890s, Hall Garth was owned by another railwayman, Henry Carrick. He came from Haltwhistle in Northumberland, where his father was a wine and spirit merchant, but he served his apprenticeship with Robert Stephenson & Company in Newcastle.

Elizabeth Carrick, the daughter of a mayor of Gateshead, with some of her family at Hall Garth. Lizzie married Henry Carrick in 1861 and was with him in his India days. She is the great-great-aunt of Jonathan PeacockA month after he married Elizabeth, in 1861, they sailed to India where Henry took up his post as the locomotive superintendent of the East Indian Railway Company at Monghyr (an ancient city now known as Munger). He was promoted to take charge of the railway’s locomotive department at nearby Jamalpur, which today is home to Asia’s oldest and largest railway workshop – it employs 25,000 people.

The Jamalpur railway workshop in 1887. Henry Carrick worked here in the 1860s. It was started by the British in 1862 and is now the largest and oldest railway workshop in India. Picture: wikipediaHenry and Elizabeth returned from India in the early 1880s. Henry had established an engineering works in Gateshead which was involved in the town’s tram system.

For a decade he called Hall Garth home, and he sold it on to Robert Bradley Summerson, whose family had a large foundry on Albert Hill. As Memories 695 told, the Summersons sold up in 1976, their foundry having gone into liquidation in 1972, and in 1977, it was converted into a hotel.

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Hall Garth Hotel, Coatham MundevilleWITH Hallowe’en approaching, it is worth mentioning that Hall Garth is said to be haunted by the ghost of a naughty nun.

She was caught leading astray a male member of the family which owned the hall, so they bricked her up in a secret tunnel which apparently led to her convent, and left her to die.

(We can’t find a record of a convent at Coatham Mundeville but rather than allow the story to wither, in 1274, Thomas de Amundeville left money for a chapel to be built, dedicated to St Mary Magdalen. It had fallen down in 1680 and the Foresters Arms car park now occupies its site, so perhaps the nun’s tunnel led over the road to the chapel.)

The nun is said to haunt Room 2 of the Hall Garth, which is above the cellar in which she died. Has anyone ever encountered her?

Hall Garth in Coatham Mundeville in the 1890sHall Garth in Coatham Mundeville in Henry Carrick's dayREAD NEXT: FROM OSTEND TO DARLO - THE SAD STORY OF THE BELGIAN REFUGEE BURIED IN WEST CEMETERY