John North: If paradise is half as nice

Now Witton Park exile Howard Chadwick - a man with a story of his own - has written a historical novel, closely allied to reality, of Victorian life and times in that once teeming south-west Durham village.

Officially, Cast in Paradise refers to part of the former ironworks community. For Witton Parkers, however, "paradise" has always said it all.

"To say we were one big family is a bit glib, but we were a band of brothers," says Howard, 59. " Everyone was around one another all the time, it was just weird. If you had an apple and your mate hadn't, you gave him a bite. If you'd pinched a few snaggers, you shared them."

Though the two principal families are fictitious, other characters in the novel are taken straight from the 19th century census.

There's William Hall, landlord of one of the 14 pubs - there were 14 chapels as well - Alexander Pritchard, jailed for attacking a "scab" during the ironworks lock-out; James McEnany, murdered; Robert Cairns, one of the Fenians attacked in the Witton Park riot which brought questions in the House.

"Many novels have a disclaimer that there's no reference to anyone living or dead," says Howard. " This one's the complete opposite."

The village barber's son, he spent the first 24 years of his life in Witton Park before the Durham County Council's death knell Category D policy finally drove the family out.

" No-one wanted to go," he recalls. " They pulled down the low streets first so they moved to the high streets, like rabbits in a ploughed field, until there was nowhere left."

Many were moved to the Woodhouse Close estate in Bishop Auckland - "The Reservation" he calls it; the Chadwicks chose Newton Aycliffe, where still they live.

Howard ran his own businesses, drove a Rolls-Royce - second hand, he insists - took up pilot's lessons to beat the fear of flying and crash landed at Teesside Airport.

"How's the plane?" his wife is said to have retorted when told of the accident.

"I was a lot better than it was," says Howard.

Thereafter, his businesses also came abruptly to earth. Unemployed, he spent years transcribing the village censuses from 1841-91, transferred them to the Witton Park website and has based his book on the stories and events they suggest.

The ironworks had opened in 1846, the village regarded (he says) as a Victorian Milton Keynes with a cosmopolitan workforce earning five times the national average.

The Irish provided the brawn, says Howard, the Welsh the iron making expertise - union fought non-union, Welsh fought Irish and Irish, Fenian and Orangemen, fought among themselves.

The non-profit making book is set against that background, Witton Park's no less remarkable 20th century survival another story - and one he's happy for someone else to tell.

"I'm no Salman Rushdie," says Howard.

It was finished in 1997, sent to Phil Atkinson - a Witton Park exile who's a professional writer in Canada - returned with suggestions for wholesale changes.

"One of the things he told me to do was to stop using ten bob words when sixpenny words would do. There's not a ten bob word in the book now."

He re-wrote reluctantly but resolutely, launches the book at another of Witton Park's celebrated gatherings on March 26, the day before Easter.

Dale Daniel, his cousin, will not only be showing old Witton Park television documentaries but has found ("goodness knows how," says Howard) a 1964 North Home service broadcast of interviews with villagers.

From another corner, songs like Billy Fury's Halfway to Paradise and (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice - Amen Corner, was it not? - may also sound familiar.

Witton Park itself is being attractively redeveloped, though not as everyone would have wished.

"I clearly remember driving my dad and Jimmy Mudd, one of the local councillors, around The Reservation when it was being built. Jimmy said that one day Witton Park would be rebuilt but it wouldn't be for the likes of us, and he was right. There's just no really affordable housing.

"I don't begrudge the people who are there, but I envy them. It's a wonderful setting, former Witton Castle land by a clear, unpolluted river in a valley and there are thousands who'd go back tomorrow if only they could afford it.

"As it is, we read in the deaths column in The Northern Echo about Witton Park folk, no matter how far away they may be, being brought back here to be buried.

"When my turn comes, that's what will happen to me. Even in death, you'd always want to come back to Witton Park." Truly, Paradise regained.

Just Jake, not to be confused with Jane

LAST week's column revealed that the lately departed Captain Richard Annand VC had been known to his men in the Durham Light Infantry as Jake - after a "tramp like" cartoon strip character of the time. We appear to have got the wrong Jake.

Dennis Towlard in Thornaby recalls a wartime Daily Mirror strip called Just Jake, featuring an officer called Capt Reilly-Fowel (or some such spelling).

"Reilly-Fowel was a very dapper character, typical officer breed. I should think Capt Annand was named after him," says Dennis, who's 87 and has been married for 65 years.

Just Jake, by Reg Parlett, appeared for years alongside Mirror cartoons like Buck Ryan, Beelzebub Jones, Belinda, Ruggles and Pip, Squeak and Wilfred.

Dennis Towlard, Darlington lad originally, remembers almost all of them. "I just never thought," he says, "that I'd end up married to a great grandmother of 87."

JAKE should not, of course, be confused with the altogether more famous Jane - a strip, or so it sometimes seemed, in every sense.

Even in her first Daily Mirror appearance in December 1932, Jane was clad only in a petticoat as she prepared to meet Count Fritz von Pumpernikel - who turned out to be her dachshund.

It was another 11 years, however, before all was finally revealed - Jane drawn running through a canteen of British servicemen as naked (says one of the websites) as a jaybird.

An American newspaper reported on the event a week later. "The British 36th division immediately gained six miles," it added.

Jane lasted, ageless and innocent, until 1959 when finally she accepted the proposal of her former enemy Georgie Porgy and disappeared, discreetly, into the sunset.

AFTER preliminary skirmishes last year, opera singer Bob Crowe and his pals are returning to take on Spennymoor and Hartlepool. This time, on song, they're confident.

Bob, West Hartlepool lad originally, is one of the Scottish based R3 Tenors - a mix, he says, of "arias, Neapolitan stuff and show songs."

Last time they drew three figure crowds to both venues. This year they're bringing in reinforcements.

"I've an aunty in Hartlepool who's getting all her troops out," he says. "There'll be posters everywhere."

The R3 Tenors play Spennymoor Town Hall on Saturday April 9 (tickets, 01388 815276) and Hartlepool Civic Theatre on Saturday May 7 (tickets, 01429 890000 or 869706.)

Thus prepared for anything, Mr Crowe hopes to wing his way to New York thereafter.

FROM his son Chris, a PS to the recent piece on the passing of Canon John Wilson - forever Jumbo.

Though still proud to be a North-East lad - born in West Hartlepool, educated at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, an Anglican priest in St Helen's Auckland and South Hetton - his funeral was in Norwich Cathedral, with two bishops and a peer of the realm in attendance.

It ended, says Chris, with a fusilier from the Tower of London piping him out - "Northumbrian pipes, of course" - to the tune of Blaydon Races.

"Many finally realised that it wasn't a dirge but an example of his classic sense of humour. Pure Jumbo."