John North: Home from home for the blarney army

It was the 1860s and they came to Bishop Auckland, where the living was uneasy and the health board's privy counsel oft ignored, before moving three years later to join other immigrant families in Gordon Gill, a beckside hamlet near Ramshaw, Evenwood.

The cottages may have been as overcrowded, the sanitary arrangements as primitive, but there were gardens and greenery and it was so reminiscent of the Old Country that Gordon Gill became known as Little Ireland.

Not all Irish, understand, but with a substantial detachment of the blarney army, nonetheless.

Little Ireland is now the title of a remarkable and wonderfully well illustrated book by Philip Lees, a family tree which grew and grew and a publication made possible because - both writer and underwriter - he abandoned early retirement in order to finance it.

"It became a passion," he says. "They were ordinary people, nothing exceptional, but they were also very good people. The story just needed to be told. I hadn't a better reason than that."

With Angela Seagrave, unquestionably local and immensely knowledgeable, we meet to talk about it all at the Bridge Inn in Ramshaw, where Peter Mattimoe had been landlord 100 years before.

Phil's forebears were Mattimoes - "a close, warm, Catholic family, generous with their hospitality" - who'd moved to Coronation, near Shildon, when Railey Fell colliery at Ramshaw hit hard times and thin seams around the First World War.

Willie Gray, his grandfather, was killed in an accident at Eldon colliery on April 22, 1927. When two of Willie's seven children won industrial placements in the south, their mother Ann - understandably reluctant to see any of them down the pit - followed with the other children. They included Phil's mum, Betty, 16 months old when her father died.

They settled in Bushey, Hertfordshire, young Peter eventually fascinated by stories of life in Co Durham and by the well filled family album.

Fortunately, he says, they were a clan who took great pleasure in having their "likenesses" taken, though Thomas Mattimoe's suit was probably borrowed from the photographer.

Digging around the tree began 20 years ago. It was only in September 2002, however, that he left a message at the Bridge asking anyone with family information to get in touch.

Angela Seagrave rang. She was his mother's second cousin, had lived all her life around Ramshaw, knew almost everyone and someone else who knew the others.

Her stories about the family were seemingly limitless, says Peter, the latter day extended family every bit as hospitable as their predecessors. "It was as if they'd known me all their lives."

Thomas Mattimoe had been a tenant farmer in Connaught, sailed to Liverpool, probably travelled by train to Bishop Auckland - in search, if not of the good life, then of something better than post-famine Ireland.

"I don't think they ever lost their Irishness," says Angela. "They were living in Gordon Gill as they might if they'd been at home.

"They supported each other when times were hard and still pulled together when they were good. If they were here today, they'd be people you'd be happy to live next door to."

The children attended Ramshaw school, where James Moore was headmaster for 42 years and where canings proliferated like pea sticks, but soon the girls were back to help their mothers with the daily toil and the boys down the indiscriminate pit.

Young Thomas Mattimoe died of liver disease, aged just 11, his occupation given as colliery engine fireman.

Joys and sorrows were shared at the Catholic mission in Evenwood, visited on horseback by the priest from Gainford and where 20 per cent of the congregation was from Little Ireland, and later at St Chad's in Witton Park, built in 1846 to serve immigrant Irish ironworkers.

Births outnumbering deaths, the Mattimoe clan in Little Ireland had grown from seven to 37 when the time came to move on yet again.

Phil Lees, who lives in Sussex and had worked in insurance, has spoken to many descendants still in south Durham and to other family members in Ireland. His 250 page book contains a substantial account of the Irish background, and of the conditions which forced tens of thousands onto the boats.

"Looking west from the West Auckland to Barnard Castle road you could be in Sligo - the hills, the white washed cottages, the tranquillity," he says.

His rich and rounded book also offers snapshots of south Durham local history, from the celebrations at the Relief of Mafeking to the night the Germans dropped 23 bombs on Evenwood - though surely not, as he suggests, mistaking it for Leeds?

Long abandoned, the cottages of Little Ireland were demolished in the 1950s. Now the Gordon Beck meanders past a farmhouse, a couple of workshops, a garage and an awful lot of molehills from which it would be unwise to make mountains.

It is still peaceful and beautiful, says Phil, still not hard to imagine how his ancestors came to enjoy life there. Little Ireland has been a huge and an expensive undertaking, but he has no doubt that it is vindicated.

* Sub-titled "A family's journey from Co Sligo to Co Durham", Little Ireland is available (£11.95) from Bishop Auckland tourist information centre, Ottakar's in Darlington, Teesdale Mercury shops, the National Railway Museum in Shildon, the newsagent's in Evenwood or, post free, from Philip Lees, 39 Old Millmeads, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 2LP. Like the Emerald Isle, a gem.

A Waster maybe, but worthy of inclusion

WHY, yer knaa... Bobby Thompson, otherwise the Little Waster, finds himself in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Legendary in the North-East but little understood (shall we say) elsewhere, the Waster is among 50,000 entries in the 60 volume publication.

His entry, says Keith Gregson who wrote it, is "a sure sign of editorial recognition of the national importance of regional culture".

Born in 1911 in New Penshaw, near Sunderland - some say it was neighbouring Fatfield, singer Alan Price's birthplace - Thompson was a miner and a soldier before taking in khaki to the stage.

"Ye didn't laff at us when aah wez fightin' for ye," he'd proclaim. Dictionary of National Biography? Who's laughing now?

OTHERS with a Durham connection in the DNB include songwriter Geordie Ridley, footballers Raich Carter and Len Shackleton, Andy Capp cartoonist Reg Smythe and Sir Cuthbert Sharp (1781-1849.)

Sharp, after whom Sharp Road in Newton Aycliffe is named, wrote the 1816 History of Hartlepool and a book on the Worms of Lambton but may have a less glamorous claim to fame.

Writing in Durham Town and Country magazine, Gregson claims that not only was Cuddy "no oil painting" but that Queen Victoria - hardly a Mona Lisa herself - considered him the ugliest man ever to have attended her court.

We've checked with Hartlepool Council, who have a picture of Sharp's house - which doubtless was very beautiful - but nothing of the great man himself. The Internet, unusually, also seems unwilling to help.

Not good for the image, but readers' assistance in resolving this Sharp practice would greatly be appreciated.

A PS from Anne Cowie to last week's piece on the proposed Stan Laurel sculpture - remember the bowler hat on the pole? - on the Eden Theatre corner in Bishop Auckland.

Anne, coordinator of the Wear Valley Disability Access Forum, notes the comment that they need something to divert American tourists off the A68 and wonders about toilets and telephone boxes.

"Both will be removed from the theatre corner to provide space for the art work. To date there is no talk of relocation of these essential services."

DARLINGTON Lions' Bookshop, half-hidden up Blackwellgate Mews and thus among the town's least known treasures, has taken delivery of a full set of Railway Wonders of the World, a 1935 part work.

The magazines were sevenpence a week, the binders two bob. Full steam, the Lions hope they'll realise much more today and invite offers.

John North column conspicuous by its absence, the Lions also recently presented £1,415 to the Darlington Citizens' Advice Bureau, £1,000 to Guide Dogs for the Blind and £528 to Yorkshire Cancer Research.

...and finally back to the family trees, and in this case a rootless suggestion.

On the BBC2 programme Past Crimes last Thursday evening, Lynn Briggs in Darlington noticed a piece on Bedlington pub landlord John Amos who in 1915 shot dead two policemen who'd tried to evict him.

Since this side of the family was still in Muswell Hill, there is unlikely to be a criminal connection. In this house, Black Sheep comes out of a bottle.