Hidden roadside memorial at Stanwick where duchess's favourite fell

She was born in 1820, a year after Victoria. She was a Grosvenor, the eldest child of the Duke of Westminster, who was one of the richest men – if not the richest man – in the country. She attended the children’s parties that Victoria’s grandfather, George III, threw in St James’s Palace in London and the two infants met on at least one occasion.

Eleanor, Dowager Duchess of Norhtumberland, who lived at Stanwick Hall for 46 yearsEleanor was married in 1842, two years after Victoria. Victoria took the hand of her first cousin, Prince Albert, who was only three months younger than her, whereas Eleanor married Algernon Percy, Lord Prudhoe, who was 28 years earlier than she was.

Stanwick HallEleanor and Algernon made their home in Stanwick Hall, to the west of Darlington, until in 1847, when he inherited his father’s title and became the 4th Duke of Northumberland. They moved to the family seat of Alnwick Castle on which they lavished a fortune turning it into a romantic setting fit for a Harry Potter movie.

But in 1865, four years after Victoria lost her husband, Eleanor’s duke also died.

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Victoria was plunged into 40 years of mourning and widowhood, whereas Eleanor was a widow for the last 46 years of her life. Victoria died in 1901, aged 81, and Eleanor 10 years later, in 1911, aged 91.

But even as they mourned, there were lots of prurient rumours about these young, wealthy, attractive widows.

Queen Victoria and her ghillie, John BrownAs early as 1866, Scottish newspapers were suggesting that there was a scandalous relationship between Victoria and her favourite man-servant, her ghillie, John Brown, who was by now accompanying her everywhere. Some said she had had a child by him; others that they had secretly wed.

When he died in 1883, Victoria paid for his headstone in Crathie churchyard, near Balmoral. It said he was her “beloved friend”, which set tongues wagging again. She then immersed herself in writing his biography, but her courtiers bravely told her it was too dangerous to publish and persuaded her to burn the document – and whatever secrets it contained.

Still, in 1884, when she published her second book about her love of Scotland she dedicated it to her “devoted personal attendant and faithful friend” John Brown, and this cemented the friendship in the popular imagination to such an extent that in 1997 a film, Mrs Brown, was made about it starring Dame Judi Dench as Victoria and Billy Connolly as the ghillie.

Billy Connolly as John Brown and Judi Dench as Queen Victoria in the 1997 film, Mrs BrownSo what about our own Queen Victoria, the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland? As Memories 698 told, after the death of her husband, she returned to Stanwick Hall on which she lavished another fortune.

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She had upwards of 60 staff working for her, most of whom toiled outdoors on the impressive estate, led by head gardener William Higgie. He was a Scotsman, from Fife, whom she poached from the Northumberland family’s Syon House in London, and instructed him to make the gardens at Stanwick every bit as good – if not better – as Syon or Alnwick.

William Higgie outside Stanwick HallStanwick’s hothouses became renowned for their bananas, peaches, grapes and figs, and especially the "Stanwick Nectarine", introduced direct from Syria but propagated by Higgie. It was described as “flesh white, melting, rich, sugary and delicious”.

There was also the Stanwick Carnation and the Stanwick Elruge (a kind of nectarine).

For the scurrilous, it would be tempting to draw comparisons between one heavily bearded outdoors-loving Scotsman and another, but Mr Higgie lived happily with his wife, Jane, and their eight children in a house in Stanwick which the Dowager Duchess built for them in 1870.

No rumour there.

William Higgie and his wife Jane and seven of their eight children at the house, Elm Grove East, which the duchess built for them in 1870 in Stanwick, and which still standsBut following the story about Stanwick Hall in Memories 698, Hugh Mortimer sent in a picture he had taken of a small reddish cross that is now all but lost in a hedge on the lane between Aldbrough St John and Stanwick Hall.

The memorial near Aldbrough St John“RB Jan 20th 1878” is all it says on it.

“Supposedly, it’s a memorial to a friend of the Dowager Duchess who was killed when his horse shied at this spot,” says Hugh, asking for further information.

The Northern Echo of Wednesday, January 23, 1878, reveals more beneath the headline "Fatal accident to a gentleman near Darlington".

It tells how an inquest had been held in East Hall, Middleton Tyas, into the death of Major Richard Boulton, 62, a veteran of the 7th Bengal Light Cavalry.

“The deceased gentleman, who has resided for a number of years at East Hall, left his house on Sunday afternoon on horseback, to make a call at the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland’s, at Stanwick Park,” said the Echo.

Maj Boulton, who had been born in Teignmouth in devon in 1815, was well known locally for his exploits on the hunting field, and was well enough known nationally – his regiment had been at the centre of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 when Indian soldiers refused to use British ammunition that had been greased with lard from pigs and tallow from cows – for his death notice to be printed in the London Evening Standard.

Many newspapers, therefore, carried details of his inquest.

"After being there (at Stanwick Hall) a short time, he left for home, and was last seen alive by a gardener going through one of the lodge gates," say their reports.

"Some 20 minutes later, a farmer named Hetherington found the Major lying by the road side, with the horse standing by. Dr Walker, who was close at hand, pronounced life extinct.

"From the appearance of the ground, as well as the condition of the horse, it was evident that the animal had made a false step and in endeavouring to recover itself had fallen, sending its rider over its head.

"He appeared to have struck his head on a low boundary wall, and then to have turned completely over."

The Echo said: “Dr Walker gave his opinion that death had arisen from concussion of the brain or dislocation of the neck. In either case, death must have been instantaneous.”

The red granite cross in the hedgerow near Stanwick St JohnThe Major was buried in Middleton Tyas churchyard after a well-attended funeral, and the Dowager Duchess erected a discreet memorial, no more than 2ft high in the hedgerow, where his life had tragically ended.

In her 46 years as a widow in Stanwick, Duchess Eleanor had a profound effect on the villages to the west of Darlington. She was generous – if at times feisty – to the villagers and built houses, schools and churches for them.

In 1901, when Queen Victoria died, Her Majesty was buried in the Royal Mausoleum in the grounds of Frogmore House at Windsor alongside her beloved Prince Albert. In her coffin was his dressing gown and a plaster cast of his hand.

But on the other side of her body, discreetly hidden from view by a flower arrangement, was a picture of John Brown, a lock of his hair and his mother’s wedding ring that he had given Victoria in 1883.

Stanwick church, where the Dowager Duchess chose to be buriedIn 1911, when the Dowager Duchess died, she chose not to be buried in the Northumberland family vault in Westminster Abbey, and instead chose to be laid to rest at Stanwick, beside the church which she had employed the renowned architect Anthony Salvin to restore during her lifetime.

“Signs of mourning were seen on every hand in the villages, and the esteem in which the late Duchess was held in the district in which she had resided for nearly 50 years was shown by the large number of her tenants present at the funeral,” said the Echo.

“The grave was lined with primroses, narcissi and laurel leaves, which had been arranged by the head gardener.”

Most historians believe it is extremely unlikely that Victoria had anything other than a close platonic friendship, based on companionship, with John Brown, and the same can be said about Eleanor – yet the small memorial in the hedge to her “friend” has prompted decades of speculation about the nature of that friendship.

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Stanwick Hall was demolished in 1923 although the orangery on the right still stands