Merry dance of the mystery nameplate

It involved a nameplate depicting the A3 steam locomotive Merry Hampton, named - like many more of its distinctly upper class - after a Derby winner.

Similar A3 nameplates have sold at auction for up to £20,000. Thomas Watson's in Darlington put a reserve of just £40 on this one, and when finally it sold for £2,500, trumpeted the success in an ad in the Echo. The nameplate was described as a "sign".

Could it have been a brass replica? "We aren't really expert enough to know," concedes a company valuer, candidly.

"Incredible," says our informant - one of the best known faces in regional television - intent on playing Merry hell.

Steam engine nameplates attract serious money, a record £60,000 paid for a plate from the A4 Golden Fleece. A plate from the class D49 York and Ainsty realised £32,000, the A3 Prince of Wales went for £18,000.

£40, it has to be said, was a remarkably reticent reserve.

"It just came in with a lot of stuff," says Watson's spokesman. "At first we thought it could be a replica because it was clean and in good condition, but when we put it on the Internet it attracted a lot of interest.

"There were people (at the auction) who perhaps thought it was genuine."

Bidding went "hotly", says the company - founded in 1840 - until £2,500, when suddenly it hit the buffers. It was either an extraordinary bargain for a genuine nameplate or a surprisingly high price for a replica.

"It's amazing that an established auctioneers' has no knowledge of the history and significance of such an item," says our jack on the box. "None of the general railway dealers had any idea of the sale."

Watson's appear to have had enough on their plate. "We were pushed to get the catalogue out that week," says the spokesman. "We don't know if it was genuine or not."

The mystery of Merry Hampton continues...

MERRY Hampton, out of Doll Tearsheet by Broomielaw, has been reckoned one of the Derby's worst winners. It was the horse's only triumph, though he was second in the St Leger after being boxed in.

"The horse's assessment in some quarters is not quite fair," says one of the websites. "Merry Hampton was an unsound colt, which made him difficult to train."

It's Broomielaw which makes the column's ears prick, however, that being the name of a station on the Darlington to Barnard Castle railway line from 1942-64 and before that a private halt for the Bowes-Lyon family who owned nearby Streatlam Castle and included the Queen Mother among their house guests.

Originally 14th century, the castle had been grandly rebuilt in the 18th, bought in 1927 by the fondly remembered Norman and Olive Field of Lartington and was blown up as part of a Territorial Army exercise in 1959. Parts of the station are still visible.

The Bowes-Lyons were racing folk, too, began the Streatlam Stud and bred West Australian which in 1853, won the Triple Crown, including the Derby - Nijinsky in 1970 the last of 14 horses to achieve the feat.

A memorial to West Australian still stands in the former castle grounds, though it never did have a steam engine named after it. In the circumstances, it may have been just as well.

SINCE the column attempts to provide something of a through service, we return to Merry Hampton and to the railways.

It was on May 10, 1926, during the General Strike, that the locomotive of that name was derailed near Cramlington in Northumberland after vandals had removed a rail.

The crew saw nothing until it was too late, crouching in the cab because of an earlier warning that their train might be stoned as it passed the embittered village. It ploughed on for another 90 yards, two passengers and the fireman injured.

Rebuilt from class A1 to A3, Merry Hampton was involved in another derailment 21 years later when the driver - who had failed to see a notice of diversion when he booked on - followed the wrong road at speed.

For collectors of railwayana it is among the ultimate excitements. "Two derailments increases the value no end," says another buff. "It makes £2,500 seem all the more unbelievable."

MERRY Hampton's nameplate arrived at Thomas Watson's as part of an estate which also included a large collection of old coins, which go under the hammer next Tuesday.

They include groats from the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, crowns and half crowns from several 17th and 18th century reigns and Roman coins. Those lots, with guide prices, are on the Internet, too. The estimates, it adds, are "only a very rough conservative guide".

ALMOST in passing, last week's column mentioned that Maurice Heslop and his wife were Hartlepool United season ticket holders. The previous week's column had noted that they'd been in Thailand for a family wedding at the time of the tsunami disaster.

Maurice now reports that the club noticed the empty seats, ascertained their whereabouts and went to some lengths to discover they were all right.

"How many football clubs," he asks not unreasonably, "would have cared about their supporters like that?"

...and finally back to the rankling ankle, or indeed ankling rankle, much pored over in recent columns.

Maurice Heslop reckons the most efficacious way to treat the obdurate leg ulcer is with vitamin E pills - "not swallowed, but broken over the wound".

The good folk at Spennymoor Churches Together, whose excellent annual dinner we addressed on Saturday, insisted that maggots were the answer - though none appeared to have gone to such wriggling extremities themselves.

Retired orthopaedic surgeon Tim Stahl, meanwhile, returned at the weekend from his first ever visit to St Bartholomew's hospital in London - where the Grand Hall is dominated by a William Hogarth mural of Jesus healing the sick.

Right in the centre, says Tim - long at Darlington Memorial Hospital - the Saviour is sorting out a particularly nasty leg ulcer.

Doubtless it won't come to that - but the way things feel just now, this bloody ankle needs a miracle.

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Published: ??/??/2004