Echo Memories: Bone-shaking dedication of the penny farthing cycling Hussars

THERE is a Saturday column in this paper that often serves as an overspill section when this page is not quite enough.

Last Saturday, that column discussed how Darlington police could use the 1835 Highways Act to ban cycling on pavements, even though that Act was passed about 50 years before the bicycle was invented.

It was a long story, but in the course of the telling, it emerged that Darlington had the oldest Bicycle Club in the North of England and one of the oldest in the country.

It was formed on January 21, 1876, when all its members had penny farthings.

They wore uniforms modelled on the Hussars, and so must have been a bizarre sight when they went on their favourite evening ride to Northallerton.

They caught the train back to Darlington because there was only so much bone-shaking that even the most enthusiastic penny farthingist could endure on the cart-rutted roads.

The Darlington club held its first sports day at Feethams in August 1881 - two years before the football club moved in.

In 1885 it held a two-night championship meeting. Hundreds, if not thousands of local people turned out to witness the spectacle of amateur and professional riders competing in races of up to five miles distance.

If you have any information or memories on any of the many topics covered in this week's column, please write to: Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF. Alternatively, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.

Recalling dinners at King's Head

THE articles here celebrating the King's Head Hotel's 110th anniversary sparked many memories, especially for Bertha Pallister, who is now 95 and lives in Shildon.

During the 1950s, her first husband, Bill Abbott, always treated her to a Saturday night seven-course meal at the King's Head.

On Sunday lunchtimes they motored out to the Morritt Arms, at Greta Bridge.

She remembers driving through the arch off Northgate and into the stable yard, where they would park their old Rover with the spare tyre on the rear -in later years they had a Singer Vogue - before walking up the grand stairs to the restaurant.

She remembers: "Mr Ostler was the maitre d', and his waiters had to go through school to be taught how to serve at a table."

She recalls that in 1957 she held her Shildon Masonic Ladies Evening for 165 guests in the ballroom at the King's Head.

Including the bus from Shildon, the evening cost 12s 6d a head, but there was a little kerfuffle as she did not want the King's Head resident band to play at the event.

Eventually, Mr Ostler was persuaded to allow the Shildon ladies to bring the Shildon Institute Band, including Tommy Smurthwaite on violin and his wife on the piano.

Pushball: The not-so-beautiful game

PUSHBALL seems to have been a fairly popular sport in the North-East during the 1930s.

The 1935 Silver Jubilee Railway Pushball Competition was mentioned in Echo Memories a few weeks ago, and since then we have received several reports of this strange game.

The Darlington competition was won by Harrowgate Hill, who seem to have beaten Eastbourne in a pushball match held in the town centre (possibly the Market Square?).

"I remember watching my father, Ike Pinkney, play pushball at the football ground at Peases Stanley, near Crook, in the early 1930s," writes Mrs A Humble, of Newton Aycliffe.

"I remember him being carried on the shoulders of his teammates, holding a cup triumphantly aloft."

She does not remember much else.

"But I do remember that my father was responsible for breaking one of the opponents' collar bones," she recalls.

At about the same time, Allan Newman, of Darlington, remembers watching pushball matches on "a scrubby stoned area near St Columbus Church, Sunderland, which had the grand title of the Oval".

He recalls seeing rather violent games of pushball between miners from Wearmouth Colliery and Sunderland shipyard workers.

Up to this point, we were struggling with the rules of this strange sport, but then a letter arrived from Eric Ewbank, who says that he actually played the game in Shildon in the late-1950s.

As a small boy, in the 1930s, he remembers seeing the game being played at Shildon Show on the Church Fields.

After the Second World War, the game was revived for a couple of years, and Eric by that time had grown old enough to take part in the contests.

He played in a knock-out competition for the Cross Keys pub, in Cheapside, Shildon.

They had a bye in the first round, but were knocked out in the second - so Eric's pushball career lasted all of one game.

However, he remembers that the ball was about 5ft in diameter.

"I'm 6ft and I could just see over the top of it when I was pushing it with my hands," he said.

He thought it was made of leather and filled with air. Other sources, though, say it was filled with straw.

There were five or six people in a pushball team and the object was to push the ball over the opponents' goal-line while they were trying to push the ball over yours.

"We wore football boots so we could get a grip on the ground, but just trousers and shirts," says Eric.

Any further information on this fantastic sport would be greatly appreciated

Land Army hostel days and nights

LAST month, Echo Memories was stationed at the Women's Land Army hostel at Beacon Hill, on the A66, at Sadberge.

Stationed there from April 1945 to August 1948 was Kathleen Cooksey, of Newton Aycliffe, who recalls it provided accommodation for 80 girls plus staff.

"It consisted of two dormitories, a common room, ablutions block, kitchen and staff quarters," she remembers of the hostel, now a transport depot.

"It was all very basic: Iron bunk beds, coke stoves for heating, stone floors."

The girls worked on farms between Stockton and Darlington.

"We had to be back in the hostel by 10.30pm unless we were working overtime," Kathleen remembers.

"Lights out was 11pm, after which the warden would come around with a torch to ensure we were all in bed.

"We were issued with one late pass each week, which ended at midnight. We used it to attend dances at Goosepool aerodrome, or at the hops in Sadberge Village Hall."

Some Sadberge girls wedded Royal Navy sailors. A couple married Canadian airmen from Goosepool, or Middleton St George as we know it today. Some married local men and one married a German prisoner of war billeted at Windlestone Hall, Rushyford.

The PoWs were also sent to work on the land and, as the photograph above from RW West, of Darlington, shows, at least one - Fritz Anscheit - left his mark on a water trough.

l But how much action did this area see in the Second World War? The answer is in the files of Mary Woodthorpe, of Sadberge:

August 26/27, 1940: Eight high explosive bombs fell in fields between Haughton-le-Skerne and Sadberge. One had a time-delay on it, and exploded at 6.35am, killing four heifers and horses. In the same raid, two high explosive bombs fell near the A66 at Great Burdon and the three incendiary bombs fell in a field of oats near the road from Sadberge to Middleton St George.

September 7, 1940: Up to 60 incendiary bombs fell in a field at Newton Grange, Sadberge, damaging six stacks of corn.

April 16, 1941: Two high explosive bombs fell near Hill House Farm near Sadberge, damaging the farmhouse windows.