Return to Blackwell Hill via Portugal

His family, though, moved away from the town nearly 30 years ago and are now split between Iberia and Bicester, Oxfordshire.

Blackwell Hill, you may remember, was built in 1870 by Eliza Barclay. Eliza's was a sorrowful life: her mother died giving birth to her, and her husband died just eight months into their marriage.

She built Blackwell Hill, overlooking the Tees, late in life, as an institution: either as an orphanage or as a servants' training college in the days when service was one of the few ways a working class girl could improve herself.

After Eliza's death in 1884, the house passed through several important hands until, in 1944, it was bought by Mr Neasham.

He had been born in Norton-on-Tees in 1901, schooled in Richmond and Middleton St George, and began as an apprentice mechanic at WE Dove's garage in Bondgate (Dove's splendid building with its over-the-pavement canopy still stands on the corner of Salt Yard, but is now empty).

In 1926, he started his own business near St Hilda's Church, in Parkgate. By 1938, he had a smart showroom on the site, a filling station in Yarm Road and a huge workshop in Borough Road.

He had a finger in every pie that was baking in town. He was a councillor, a magistrate, a freemason, an alderman, a mayor; he was chairman of the aero club at Croft Circuit; he was a leading member of the Rotary Club, cricket club, motor club, St John Ambulance Brigade, and the chrysanthemum society; and he had Ford dealerships in Northallerton and Richmond, as well as in Parkgate.

He was probably best known as a director of Darlington Football Club from 1936 to 1964, and as chairman from 1951. It is true that for all his reign, the Quakers flirted outrageously with the bottom of Division Three. It is also true that it was during his reign that they enjoyed possibly their greatest moment of the 20th Century, drubbing Chelsea 4-1 in an FA Cup replay.

They had drawn 3-3 at Stamford Bridge and so brought the Londoners back to Feethams on January 29, 1958. A crowd of 15,150 crammed in - although at least double that number claim to have been there - to see the Quakers score three joyful times in extra time.

Mr Neasham's other great claim to fame was that his new garage was the first building to open on Darlington's new inner ring-road. Lady Starmer opened the £135,000 steel and concrete construction on May 20, 1966.

The garage's general sales manager was the wonderfully-named Baron Gabriel H Calcagni de Tande. "Gaby", as he was known throughout the town, had come to Britain from Italy in 1941 to fly Spitfires with the Free French Airforce. He married a Darlington girl, and in 1948 Mr Neasham had spotted him selling surplus war aircraft and persuaded him to start selling cars.

But the move on to the ring-road did not benefit the business, for it struggled in the late-1960s. Mr Neasham's health also declined, and he died on October 6, 1969 - the day that Skipper of Burnley completed the takeover of the garage. (Skipper sold on to Sanderson Ford in 1994, and since January 2000, Neasham's garage has been owned by CD Bramall.)

Mr Neasham's son, Brian, put Blackwell Hill up for auction. It went for £140,000 to a developer who pulled it down and built Farrholme on its site.

Then Brian sold Sheraton Park, which his father had built for him in 1956 behind the large stone wall that once protected Blackwell Hill's vegetable garden.

Brian and his wife, Barbara, emigrated to Lisbon, Portugal, where he set up a designer clothing business.

Barbara's parents, Jim and Dora Hopps, from Etherley Dene Farm, near Bishop Auckland, and her brother Michael soon followed them.

Unfortunately, in April 1974 a revolution broke out in Portugal against the right-wing dictator Marcello Caetano, who was conducting unpopular colonialist wars in Mozambique and Africa. A strange combination of army officers and Communists toppled Caetano and the Portugese economy slid into recession.

Brian Neasham's business struggled, too. He returned to England and went back into the motor trade, working in the south-east for HR Owen, Rolls Royce specialists. He died last year, aged 69.

Barbara and her family remained in Portugal and it is through her, and via her son Steven, a solicitor in Bicester, Oxfordshire, that the pictures of the lost Darlington mansion have emerged to be printed above.

As a child, Steven visited his grandfather, John Neasham, in Blackwell Hill.

He remembers: "It was quite an austere house, rather gloomy at the back with lots of corridors and big wooden staircases. The gardens, though, were glorious."

Seeking the site of Fawbert Towers

SO where exactly did Geordie Fawbert live? Judging by the number of calls and comments, this has obviously been exercising some minds since the story of his life here a fortnight ago.

The Parkgate area of Darlington town centre changed irrevocably when the inner ring-road swept through in the 1960s. But piecing together numerous memories and clues, we believe that Fawbert Towers was on the corner of East Street and Parkgate, with the Skerne running directly behind it.

It was here, of course, that Geordie famously refrigerated his fish by putting them in inside-out coal sacks and lowering them into the river. And it was in here, of course, that Geordie famously kept his horse in the front room.

Jim Shields remembers peering into the front room when a boy. Unfortunately, Geordie's horse was out at the time, but he could see the orange crates piled up as chairs.

What really struck him, though, was that the walls were decorated with large squares of differently-patterned wallpapers torn out of sample books.

More gossip regarding the coffin lid scandal

THE Coffin Lid Scandal catapulted Darlington into the national headlines at the end of the Second World War.

We are tantalisingly short of details, but it would appear that an undertaker was re-using coffins rather than allow them to be cremated along with their owneroccupiers. The funeral fraud ended in a court case.

Since mentioning the scandal a couple of weeks ago, we have had it whispered that the undertaker concerned might have been Will Hirstwood, whose premises were in Eastbourne Road where some flats are now. Any further snippets would be most welcome.

YOU will remember that on the Yorkshire side of Abbey Bridge, close to Egglestone Abbey, near Barnard Castle, there were two symmetrical circular toll-collectors' cottages. The collectors, Tom and Elsie Young, had their bedroom in the right-hand one and crossed for breakfast to their kitchen and livingroom in the left-hand one. The one on the left also doubled as a tiny tearoom with a couple of tables outside on nice days.

Robin Hind stayed in the cottages on several occasions in the early 1950s because the Youngs were his godparents.

"There was no electricity, just a tilly lamp hanging from the ceiling, " he recalls.

"I remember being there one night when a car - an Austin 7 - crashed into the bridge. The driver worked for Howards, in Darlington Covered Market. And I remember another time a body being found on the rocks in the river, and they identified him from his pocketwatch. His name was Stringfellow."

Tom Young was the uncle of Eddie Severs, of Darlington, and in the 1930s, Eddie holidayed at Abbey Farm, near the bridge. He recalls the living room of the toll house had a split door. The top was permanently open so watch could be kept.

"Believe it or not, " he says, " a few people would actually try to creep past on hands and knees out of sight to avoid paying."

DOWNSTREAM on the Tees is Whorlton Bridge - re-opened on Friday after its improvements. It was from here in the early years of the Second World War that Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood and watched soldiers on exercise crossing the river.

During the war, soldiers were stationed for training in six camps around Barnard Castle.

Barnard Castle historian Alan Wilkinson verifies the story and adds that the Barney stationmaster, a very well-built fellow, was in a right state before the PM's visit. Churchill's arrival was supposed to be a secret, so should the stationmaster address him as Prime Minister, which might sound as if he had been prepared for seeing a surprise guest step off the train. Or should he address him as Sir, the usual greeting for passengers which may have been considered as a little rude by such a great personage.

The large stationmaster had not made up his mind as Churchill's train drew in and the Prime Minister got out. He walked towards the stationmaster with his hand outstretched and said: "My, you're a big bugger."

Says Alan: "That broke the ice, and it didn't matter what the stationmaster called him."

Published: 12/11/2003

If you have anything to add to any of topics covered, write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.