I'VE got to get up onto my new knees next week and walk because I'm due to give two talks.
On Monday, I'm giving Of Fish and Actors to Gainford Local History Society at 7.30pm. My diary doesn't say where, but I guess it is the hall, opposite the fish and chip shop, with the very grand windows. They are way oversize for a humble village hall, but that's because they were originally in 18th Century Stanwick Hall. When it was demolished in the early 1920s, Gainford's eccentric vicar, the Reverend Eddleston, acquired a variety of its interesting pieces of masonry - the great column, overlooking Gainford church, is another relic from Stanwick.
On Wednesday, as advertised in The Northern Echo yesterday, I am giving The Story of the Statue to Darlington Historical Society in the Friends Meeting House in Skinnergate at 7.30pm.
It will be only the second time I've given this talk. The only other time was in Darlington library immediately prior to the re-unveiling of Joseph Pease's statue following its restoration as part of the Pedestrian Heart project.
The talk includes some discussion of Joseph's fortune. He died in 1872 and was worth £320,000.
I've tried various ways of calculating what money back then would be worth right now. There are so many different ways: inflation, wages, property prices, growth in GDP, etc. They give widely differing results, anything up to £168 million.
However, I'm not using the inflation calculator on the Bank of England's website, which says Pease was worth a more modest £27.12m - a fortune I'd be quite happy with sitting in my bank account.
So that's how much Darlington's greatest son, the only man the town has thought worthy enough to create a statue of, was worth.
Yet I'm currently working on some stuff about Alfred Backhouse, who built Pilmore Hall, Hurworth, which is now Middlesbrough FC's training complex and superb luxury hotel, Rockliffe Hall. Banker Alfred died 16 years after Pease in 1888. His estate was valued at £369,000, which the BoE's inflation calculator puts at £35.95m - far more than Joseph.
I had always assumed that the Peases had benefitted most from their dynamic leadership of the Industrial Revolution in the Tees Valley, but really it was the steady backroom Backhouses.
Anyone with a few minutes to spare and nothing better to do is welcome at either talk. I might even have some Cotherstone cheese to assist digestion of the Pease talk.
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