Gainford: a queen of Durham remains a resplendent village

The splendid houses of the High Row overlook the village green with the River Tees babbling by at the bottom.

It is a typically Medieval Durham lay-out - the houses, with their private gardens behind, were built facing the common land.

In times of trouble, the villagers would drive their livestock onto the green, where they could be protected from the marauding Scots and any unpleasant characters roaming the district.

The main feature of the green has, for centuries, been the Village Cross. In 1790, it was moved from the centre of the green to nearer St Mary's Church. Then, in 1897, to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, it was moved to its current position on the north-west side of the green.

To mark the occasion, a new shaft and head were placed on the cross. Therefore, the only part of the old monument, which is truly centuries old, is the well-worn top step.

The feet that have worn this stone down belonged, in centuries past, to servants and farmhands who stood on it on hiring day hoping they would attract a master who would offer them employment.

The company that was responsible for rebuilding the cross was Charge Brothers, the builders Echo Memories met a couple of weeks ago when the story was told of the firm re-erecting the curious column in the grounds of Edleston House in the mid-1920s.

The firm, whose yard still faces the main road through the village, was founded about 130 years ago by Isaac Charge, the great-grandfather of the brothers who run the company today.

Charge Brothers have worked across the area, as a superb photograph hanging in their office shows. It was taken in the 1930s when they were called in to shore up the cliff on which High Coniscliffe vicarage was built.

By coincidence, Echo Memories was raving about the vicarage only last summer.

It dates from the 18th Century, but in 1860 Gothic architect Samuel Sanders Teulon extended the vicarage to the edge of the riverside shingle quarry.

He added round turrets which rise like a Swiss chateau out of the cliff.

However, the cliff and turrets require regular maintenance, which is tricky at such a height. But, with primitive wooden scaffolding, Charge Brothers got the job done.

It was Robert and Alice Edleston who paid Charge Brothers to erect the curious column.

On January 5, Echo Memories told how the Edlestons had wanted to erect a memorial to their father Joseph in the grounds of the village church, where he had been vicar from 1863 to 1895.

They also wanted to remember their two brothers, who died in infancy and were buried in the churchyard.

But, due to a disagreement, the church authorities refused permission. So, Robert and Alice acquired the tallest column imaginable from the remains of Stanwick Hall and had it erected on their own property, as close as possible to the churchyard boundary. It was, effectively, a monumental V-sign.

The Edlestons, as you will have gathered, were an eccentric family. But in particular Miss Alice, who died in 1956, is also remembered for her generosity.

The gardens of Edleston House were regularly thrown open for all kinds of village occasions, like Maypole dances.

E D Bowen, from Darlington, who attended the village school, said: "I can remember our school garden fetes held in the grounds with the older children dancing on the lawns, wearing sashes of red, green, yellow and blue."

He also remembers Miss Alice's exotic pet, a tortoise. "It looked huge when I was six or seven," he says.

Despite Miss Alice's father being the Anglican vicar of Gainford, she and her mother had, embarrassingly for the reverend, converted to Catholicism in 1880. Miss Alice felt there should be a Catholic infants school in the village to complement the Anglican one.

So she opened a school in the ground floor rooms of one of her properties on High Row. It was called St Colette's.

"I was in Sister Agatha's class and the younger ones in Sister Columba's class," recalls Catherine Taylor (nee Flesher), who attended in the mid-1950s.

"In the main, the pupils were children of the masters at St Peter's School, plus a few extras like myself and my younger sister Margaret.

"As you can imagine, the sisters were very strict, but the education was second to none - maybe the fear had something to do with it, plus the fact that there was a maximum of four or five in each class."

St Colette's closed on Miss Edleston's death, and its pupils had transferred to St Mary's Roman Catholic School in Barnard Castle.

The article on January 5 was illustrated by a fine picture of the Reverend Joseph Edleston, who died in 1895. It showed him in an ecclesiastical procession to Gainford church.

At the front of the procession, Audrey Dawking, from Darlington, spotted her grandfather, John Richard Deacon (1866-1941).

He had a story to tell because he was an orphan, brought up by his two maiden aunts in Coniscliffe Road, Darlington, and educated at Gainford Academy - the private school founded in 1818.

He prospered, setting himself up as a valuer and auctioneer, and becoming a leading figure in the village.

He lived in Fox Grove, a house which fronts the green, and married his housekeeper, Jane Raine, who was 13 years his junior.

In 1934, his son John Maurice married Margaret from the Davison family of Gainford hauliers (they were Audrey's parents).

By then, John Richard was doing well enough to have a house, Linden Lea, built for the newlyweds, just off the green.

Most of the stone for the building was carried from the Tees and, naturally, Charge Brothers did the construction.

THERE was mention earlier of St Peter's School, the derelict remains of which a Teesdale policeman says "cast a dark shadow over the village in more ways than one".

Indeed they do. It is quite incredible that this vast hulk of crumbling brickwork, on the edge of "the Queen of Durham villages", should have been allowed to become such an eyesore for so very long.

The school was built by the Catholic church in about 1900 as an orphanage for 300 boys. As Echo Memories reported in 2002, 120 Basque children - refugees from the Spanish Civil War - were homed there in 1937. After the war, it became an approved school, which closed in 1984.

Part of it was subsequently used as a nursing home, but that closed last century and, since then, the building's hulk has decayed more and more, casting a dark shadow over the village.